Columbia River Studies as a Field Class

At the end of February 1999, twenty-three students and four teachers left Stevenson High School for a three-day survey of the Columbia River, from Stevenson to Walla Walla on the Washington side of the river and from Pendleton to Cascade Locks on the Oregon side. Our goal was to look at important built and natural environments on the river, to examine how the landscape and climate varies along the river, and to ask questions about land use and activities on the river. This was our itinerary:

Friday
- Drano Lake
  Just off State Road 14, a few miles east of Stevenson, is Drano Lake, a good place to look at the geology of the Gorge and to think about land use.
- Condit Dam
  Condit Dam, located northwest of White Salmon, Washington, and is owned by PacificCorps, which has been forced to either make the dam fish-friendly by installing fish ladders or other devices that will allow salmon access to the upper White Salmon River or to take the dam out. At the dam, students talked with a representative of Pacific Corps. We then traveled to Northwest Lake, which was formed 100 years ago by the dam, to talk with a resident of the area. Students also heard from a representative from Cascade Alliance, a group advocating the breaching of the dam, and this year they heard from a Cascade Indian who has long been an activist for Native American land issues in the Gorge. Having all of these different points of view presented at the site was a very powerful way to get students to think about the issue of salmon and dams on the Columbia and its tributaries.
- Celilo Falls Overlook
  Located 9 miles east of The Dalles, is the location of the great fishing and trading area for NW Native Americans, flooded since 1956 under the backwater of the Dalles dam.
- Maryhill State Park
  This public park sits right on the river below Maryhill on the Washington side of the river. It is a good place to feel close to the river and to get a feel for what it must have been like on the river for early people there.
- Hanford Nuclear Reservation
  A retired physicist from Hanford, which is located near the Tri-Cities area of Washington, took students on a bus tour through the reservation, where they saw reactors, burial sites of nuclear waste, and the Hanford Reach, the last free-flowing stretch of the Columbia River.
Saturday
- Whitman Mission
  The mission, which is located just west of Walla Walla, Washington, is the site of the 1847 Whitman Massacre. Led by a historian from nearby Whitman College, students toured the grounds of the mission, whose buildings are outlined on the ground, and walked along the tracks left by immigrant wagons of 150 years ago. This was one of the places where students could look at perspective and try to consider that place from both the missionary and the Indian point of view.
- Umatilla Indian Reservation
  The Umatilla Indian Reservation is located near Pendleton, Oregon. Students spent much of the afternoon talking about the salmon recovery efforts of the Umatilla Tribe. They visited the fish hatchery and native plant nursery and heard how the Tribe had brought by the Umatilla River for salmon.
- Tamastlikt Cultural Center
  At Tamastilikt, located on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, students toured the new history museum with a Umatilla guide.
Sunday
- Umatilla Army Depot
  The Umatilla Army Depot is located near Umatilla, Oregon, about 90 miles west of Pendleton. The depot landscape is littered with hundreds of concrete bunkers that contain biological weapons scheduled for disposal in a new facility being built there.
- Gorge Discovery Center
  The museum in the Gorge Discovery Center, located on the river in The Dalles, Oregon, tells the natural and human history of the Gorge.

Logistical notes about this trip