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Dams of the Columbia Basin & Their Effects on the Native Fishery
The Dalles Dam with Mt. Hood in the background and I-84 in the foreground. Courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Dalles Dam:
Columbia River, at mile marker 191.5, completed 1957, federally owned, concrete gravity type, hydroelectric, fish ladder, spillway
1380 feet, 23 gates, 1.5 miles long. creates Lake Celilo, 23.6 miles long.
Why did they have to build this dam?
-- Flora Cushinway Thompson, wife of Tommy Thompson, chief of the Wyams
The Dalles Dam angered many by violating Indian fishing rights when it flooded the spectacular Celilo falls area and forever buried much of the ancient history of the Columbia Basin in 1957. The Dalles Dam inundated Celilo Falls, Tenmile Rapids, Fivemile Rapids, and other nearby falls. For thousands of years Indians had fished these falls, building scaffolds out over the rushing water and plying the river with long-handled dipnets.
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Horseshoe Falls before inundation by The Dalles Dam. Courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers |
Vice-President Nixon at the dedication of The Dalles Dam in 1959. Courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers |
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