According to the Gorge Heritage Museum website (retrieved 2014):

 

"... In the early 1890s, White Salmon transported its annual berry crops to the ferry landing on the Columbia River via an access right of way through Bingen. During his feud with A.H. Jewett of White Salmon, Theodore Suksdorf closed the right of way cutting White Salmon off from the landing. White Salmon responded with a massive volunteer effort and built their own steamboat dock, the Dock Grade road in 1892, and the Bluff Stairway in 1897. The stairway ran from the old Ziegler place at the foot of the bluff to a landing at the top of the bluff between the Pollard and Teunis Wyers homes. Most accounts have the total number of steps at 652. The steps were used about 15 years for both business and pleasure ... The last of the stairway burned up in a bluff fire in the early 1950s."