As I mentioned in a recent post, the river cruise my husband and I were supposed to take in May was canceled. Periodically, I search “river cruises” and moon over the itineraries, thinking of future trips. Where might we go to escape the current boredom of life at home? So far, most cruise lines are months away from offering any options. Plus, we’re still not comfortable traveling. So my browsing is still in the pipe dream stage. But someday . . .
There is one river itinerary I don’t think we will ever take—along the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington, and up the Snake River into Idaho. I grew up in those environs, and there isn’t much along the route I haven’t seen, though I haven’t seen most of it from the water. I’ve driven along the Columbia River many times, seen the waterfalls and the Columbia Gorge, and eyed the high lava cliffs above the river. I haven’t actually been to Hell’s Canyon on the Snake, but I’ve been to other vantage points along the Columbia and Snake. I know that part of the world well.
What I would like to see of the rivers has been lost to history. I wish I had seen the Columbia and Snake rivers before they were dammed.
Both the Columbia and Snake rivers are heavily dammed. Our family trips from Richland, Washington, to the Portland, Oregon, area passed by McNary Dam, John Day Dam, The Dalles Dam, and Bonneville Dam on the lower Columbia. I have pleasant memories of boating on the reservoir created Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake. I grew up in an all-electric house powered by these and other hydroelectric dams of the Pacific Northwest. I know the benefits these dams brought. And I’m not sure the current environmental movement to get rid of the dams is wise, though the adverse impact on salmon migrations is indisputable.
But despite the benefits I’ve experienced from the modern dams, I still wish I had seen the magnificence of the cascades on the Columbia and Snake Rivers that the early settlers on the Oregon Trail encountered. (Though I’m glad I didn’t have to battle the fierce currents with only oars and poles the way they did.)
I’ve written before about the Snake River falls, including Shoshone Falls (the “Niagara of the West”). These majestic caldrons are all gone now, but what a sight they must have been. And I’ve written about the Hanford Reach, which is the only part of the lower Columbia above the tidal waters that is not part of a dammed reservoir.
But one of the historical aspects of the Columbia that I haven’t written about before is Celilo Falls. Celilo Falls was a part of the Columbia located about thirteen miles upriver from where The Dalles Dam is now. Basalt rocks funneled the mile-wide river through a 140-foot channel and over the forty-foot high cascade. (“The Dalles” means “the narrows” in French.) Lewis and Clark called Celilo Falls simply “the Great Falls.”
Photo by Lee Moorhouse, Courtesy Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture
Courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Native Americans built fishing platforms to catch salmon at Celilo Falls. They used spears, long hooked poles, and dip nets to haul in huge quantities of fish. The river provided their livelihood and also became a trading site for tribes from all over the Pacific Northwest. The settlement was active for thousands of years before the American pioneers started flowing into in the region in the mid-nineteenth century. But by the end of that century the whites and Native Americans were fighting over the fish.
From The Dalles downstream, the Columbia was not the broad swift-flowing stream it is today. Chutes and rapids like those at Celilo Falls cut through the cliffs that rose above the river’s surface. It was at The Dalles that the travelers along the Oregon Trail had to decide whether to raft on the Columbia or trek through the Cascade Mountains. The dangers from the cataracts and rapids on the Columbia were the impetus for building the Barlow Road, though the road around Mount Hood brought its own perils.
Courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The Dalles Dam was opened in 1957, a year after I was born. The dam changed everything. In the space of hours, the rising waters of Celilo Lake between The Dalles Dam and John Day Dam flooded the Native American fishing platforms, as well as the millennia-old settlements and turned the river into what we know it as today.
What sights lost to history do you wish you had seen?
