yes i do know. used to live at beacon rock.
WTF are you doing on the site if you hate rock climbing, did anybody tell you that the mt. hood speculation thread was locked?
In 1811, Alexander Ross of the John Jacob Astor expedition called the rock Inoshoack Castle. The rock became known as Castle Rock until 1916, when the United States Board of Geographic Names restored the name back to Beacon Rock.
In the early 1900s, the Army Corps of Engineers planned to destroy Beacon Rock with dynamite. Railroad officials opposed the idea because they didn't want the blasting to drop boulders onto the train tracks. Their opposition was enough to get the demolition stopped. Another idea was to use Beacon Rock as a rock quarry.