An Oregon Story:
From Rivers to Reservoirs:
The Last of the Lumbermills:
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Wal-lamt: The Green River
Can you breath without air? Can you live without water? Do you need the sun? Do you need the earth in order to be able to sustain a way of life?
-- Carol Logan, 2000 interview
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and increasing human population in the valley.
Courtesy Willamette Riverkeepers
The Kalapuyans called the Willamette River the Wal-lamt, loosely translated as "green river." The Wal-lamt River of 150 years ago featured a braided landscape of tributaries, islands, and wetlands whose details could change shape after a hard rain or dry summer. The river's channel had a breadth of up to two miles where the river left sediments that now make up fertile valley farmlands. It was home to river shore forests, wapato, Willamette valley daisies, Western pond turtles, bald eagles, Purple Martin, and Fender's blue butterflies, all of which are now rarely found in the valley environment.
The last 150 years of settlement and development have transformed the river from a healthy water network into a diseased river that is now limited to 40 percent of its original channel. Oregonians noticed the change in the 1920s when the state closed the river to swimmers. In 1926, the state created the Anti-Pollution League whose mandate was to clean the river. A year later the Portland City Club called the river "ugly and filthy."
