The last time the Columbia River froze solid was in the winter of 1908-09, and it was hard enough to drive a horse and wagon across the ice between Portland, Oregon and Fort Vancouver in Washington. And that was three decades before Bonneville Dam was built so the river was completely untamed.
In 1967 the Dallas Cowboys played the Green Bay Packers at Lambo Field on New Year's Eve. The temperature at game time was -15 (fifteen degrees BELOW zero) with a wind chill of -48 (forty eight degrees below zero) resulting in that game being immortalized as the "Ice Bowl"(the Packers won, 21-17). There hasn't been a football game played in that kind of cold since.
Things like this make me very grateful for a little global warming.