There are also stretches where the river and its tributaries have incised themselves into tight gorges. It is the only food I am dependent on for my livelihood, and I am here to protect that.” But government witnesses opposed a moratorium because the region’s population and economy were growing and new sources of electricity were needed. [80] A commonly traveled route was from Wallula, Washington, 120 miles (190 km) downstream of the Snake River's mouth, upstream to Lewiston. From killer whales slicing through waves to salmon jumping rapids on their journey home, marine life fills and defines the waters of the West Coast. One reason is that the river runs through three different states, and is over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) long. Dams also changed the food web in rivers by impounding reservoirs, as well as by altering the ecology downriver of dams through, for example, changes in sediment transport. The four reservoirs formed by the lower Snake River dams—Lake Sacagawea, Lake Herbert G. West, Lake Bryan, and Lower Granite Lake—have also formed problems, as the downstream current in the pools is often not enough for the fish to sense, confusing their migration routes. Later American explorers, some of whom were originally part of the Lewis and Clark expedition, journeyed into the Snake River watershed and records show a variety of names have been associated with the river. Following World War II government river planners faced intense pressure to step up construction of dams in order to provide more power for industry. [67] Many of these later explorers were original members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition who had returned to map and explore the area in greater detail. Today, the hatcheries are operated jointly with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Major cities along the river include Jackson in Wyoming, Twin Falls, Idaho Falls, Boise, and Lewiston in Idaho, and the Tri-Cities in Washington (Kennewick, Pasco and Richland). Lower Granite Dam is located approximately 15 miles northeast of Pomeroy in Garfield County. In May 1999, a federal judge approved a settlement that required Avista Corp., formerly Washington Water Power, to pay $39 million to the Nez Perce Tribe for fish losses caused by Lewiston Dam and another dam that also was owned by Avista's predecessor. Through the 1950s, state fishery officials did not object to all dams, only those like Mayfield and Mossyrock on the Cowlitz River, a lower Columbia tributary in Washington, that were proposed for sites where the potential damage to anadromous fish runs would be the greatest. The Hells Canyon Project was built and maintained by Idaho Power Company starting in the 1940s, and was the second of the three major water projects on the river. Since many juvenile salmon perish at each dam while swimming out to the ocean, massive ships filter and collect these baby salmon by size and take them out to the ocean for a ride, where they can be guaranteed to make it alive to saltwater. The mostly semi-arid, even desert climate of the Snake River watershed on average, receives less than 12 inches (300 mm) of precipitation per year. [97], The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) divides the Snake River's watershed into two freshwater ecoregions: the "Columbia Unglaciated" ecoregion and the "Upper Snake" ecoregion. Most of the Snake River watershed lies between the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Columbia Plateau on the northwest. He expected strong opposition to the dams. Salmon were the mainstay of the Nez Perce and most of the other tribes below Shoshone Falls. Of these, the Clark Fork (via the Pend Oreille River) and the Spokane join the Columbia above the Snake, while the John Day joins downstream of the Snake, in the Columbia River Gorge. However, in the high Rockies of Wyoming, in the upper Jackson Hole area, the average precipitation is over 30 inches (760 mm), and snowfall averages 252 inches (6,400 mm). The WWF placed the ecoregion boundary about 50 kilometres (31 mi) downriver from Shoshone Falls in order to include the Big Wood River (the main tributary of the Malad River) in the Upper Snake ecoregion, because the Wood River is biologically distinct from the rest of the downriver Snake. They also made note of the "Snake Indians" who lived along the river, who were actually the Shoshone tribe, and learned that the Native Americans called the river Ki-moo-e-nim or Yam-pah-pa (for an herb that grew prolifically along its banks). The fish-passage problem was not unknown in the 1930s. [38] This desert climate occupies the majority of the basin of the Snake River, so although it is longer than the Columbia River above the Tri-Cities, its discharge is on average significantly less. The committee convened its hearing on the Snake River dams in Walla Walla, Washington, on June 25. [86] By the time Lewis and Clark explored the area, the Nez Perce and Shoshone were the dominant Native American groups in the region. The Wood River sculpin (Cottus leiopomus) is endemic to the Wood River. In 1927, Inland Power and Light Company completed Lewiston Dam on the Clearwater River four miles upstream from its confluence with the Snake. Strike Reservoir. The dam was constructed in 1904 at the Minam Fish Hatchery, and on June 4, 1914, in a late-season snow storm, the dam was dynamited. On the southwest side a divide separates the Snake watershed from Oregon's Harney Basin, which is endorheic. One crossing the trail made over the Snake River was near the present-day site of Glenns Ferry. Both rivers had large salmon and steelhead runs. Dams were seen as good for the economy and bad for salmon, but salmon were seen as good for the economy, too. However, these dams blocked salmon migration above Hells Canyon and have led to water quality and environmental issues in certain parts of the river. 7-night river cruise on the Columbia, Snake & Willamette Rivers Set sail for the recreation mecca of the rivers. Engineers at Whooshh Innovations have developed a fish passage system that allows for the safe and timely transportation of fish over barriers through a flexible tube system via volitional entry into the system. At one point, sign language used by the Shoshones representing weaving baskets was misinterpreted to represent a snake, giving the Snake River its name.[10]. [61], The Shoshone or Shoshoni were characterized by nomadic groups that took their culture from the earlier Bitterroot culture and Great Basin tribes that migrated north via the Owyhee River. On March 19, 1934, Congress passed the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act (amended in 1946 and 1958), which required the federal government to take fish and wildlife into consideration in the planning of federal water development projects. Why Remove The 4 Lower Snake River Dams? Some dams — the Third Powerhouse at Grand Coulee, for example — use Francis turbines, which look more like giant salad spinners. The three dams of the project, Brownlee Dam, Oxbow Dam and Hells Canyon Dam, are located in upper Hells Canyon. The largest by far is the Clearwater River, which drains 9,000 square miles (23,000 km2) in north central Idaho. After destroying the dam, salmon populations noticeably recovered. Salmon from the Pacific Ocean spawned by the millions in the river, and were a vital resource for people living on the Snake downstream of Shoshone Falls. On the north the Snake River watershed is bounded by the Red Rock River, a tributary of the Beaverhead River, which flows into the Jefferson River and into the Missouri River, part of the Gulf of Mexico drainage basin. The elevation of the privately owned dam was raised in 1929. For other uses, see, Major river in the northwestern United States, Lewis River, Shoshone River, Mad River, Saptin River, Yam-pah-pa, Lewis Fork. [citation needed]. On August 27, 1965, there was temporarily no flow as a result of testing at Ice Harbor Dam. It was, obviously, a different world back then — fewer dams, fewer people, less hydropower. [90] These dams are, from upstream to downstream: Lower Granite Lock and Dam, Little Goose Lock and Dam, Lower Monumental Lock and Dam, and Ice Harbor Lock and Dam. [42] Eggs from Wallowa River salmon were incubated and the smolts released from the Bonneville Fish Hatchery at Eagle Creek several hundred miles downriver on the Columbia to feed the commercial fishing industry, but the dam had decimated the Wallowa River fishery. The Snake River Plain and the gap between the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range together formed a "moisture channel," opening the way for Pacific storms to travel more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) inland to the headwaters of the Snake River. As a result, the Shoshone centered on a trading economy. [13][32][33], The Snake River is the thirteenth longest river in the United States. There are fifteen dams in total along the Snake River, which aside from irrigation, also produce electricity, maintain a navigation channel along part of the river's route, and provide flood control. In the decade following World War II, the Northwest economy continued to improve despite the predictions of some observers that the return of peace would mean lost jobs at shipyards, aluminum smelters, and aircraft plants. The four lower Snake River dams were designed with features to aid the migration of both juvenile and adult fish. Then, with the construction of Grand Coulee, the salmon disappeared. His name was Wilfred Jacobs, and he told me he could remember a time when, as a boy, he accompanied his parents to fish for salmon in the Slocan River, a Kootenay River tributary east of Castlegar, where the Kootenay flows into the Columbia. [42], The rest of the Snake River watershed borders on several other major Columbia River tributaries - mostly the Spokane River to the north, but also Clark Fork in Montana to the northeast and the John Day River to the west. In either design, the upstream entrance to the turbine pit is higher than the downstream exit, and so water falls through the pit and spins the runner, which is connected by a shaft to a turbine below. Fishing the Pacific lifts spirits, feeds families and supports the economies of California, Oregon, Washin The confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers at Burbank, Washington is part of Lake Wallula, the reservoir of McNary Dam. At 1,078 miles (1,735 km) long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, in turn the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. Irrigation pumps for fields in southeastern Washington would also have to reach further to access the water of the Snake River. [34][35] Above the confluence, the Snake is slightly longer than the Columbia—1,078 miles (1,735 km)[5] compared to 928 miles (1,493 km)[36]—and its drainage basin is slightly larger—4% bigger than the upstream Columbia River watershed.[6][37]. The Columbia is one of the world’s greatest sources of hydroelectric power and, with its tributaries, represents a third of the potential hydropower of the United States. [52] At Anatone, Washington, downstream of the confluence with the Salmon, one of the Snake's largest tributaries, the mean discharge is 34,560 cu ft/s (979 m3/s). “Why spend the taxpayers’ money for unwarranted reclamation and navigation projects before a fish program is fully guaranteed,” asked Henry Niemela of the Columbia River Fishermen’s Protective Union, a lower river association of gillnetters. There were many causes — harvest in the lower river took a huge toll between about 1880 and 1910, for example — but the multiple impacts of dams were key among them: warmer water, slower flows, ineffective fish passage and, at hydroelectric dams, the spinning turbine blades and intense water pressure in the turbine pits that could literally implode the tiny juvenile fish, although the mortality associated with turbine passage would not be clear until research began to prove it in the early 1950s. Water in the aquifer eventually travels to the west side of the Snake River Plain and re-enters the river as springs. [3], Agricultural runoff from farms and ranches in the Snake River Plain and many other areas has severely damaged the ecology of the river throughout the 20th century. The Nez Perce also were involved in trade with the Flathead tribe to the north and other middle Columbia River tribes. Prehistoric Native Americans lived along the Snake starting more than 11,000 years ago. Dominy, who clearly believed dams were more important than fish, commented: “Now, I’m sure people can survive without salmon, but I don’t think they can survive without beans and potatoes and lettuce. In 1810, Andrew Henry, along with a party of fur trappers, discovered the Henrys Fork of the Snake River, which is now named after him. Explorers misinterpreted it to represent a snake, giving the river its present-day name.[56]. Each Kaplan blade is about 12 feet across and weighs about 20,000 pounds. The Snake River Plain forms one of the only relatively easy paths across the main Rocky Mountains for many hundreds of miles, allowing Native Americans both east and west of the mountains to interact. Dams also altered habitat by creating reservoirs. [97] With a channel about 5 feet (1.5 m) deeper than the Mississippi River system, the Columbia and Snake rivers can float barges twice as heavy. Way back in 1958, Anthony Netboy wrote in his book Salmon of the Pacific Northwest that “the fish problem,” as he called it, was a “never-ending conflict” that was effectively delaying water power developments in the Columbia River, developments of power and flood control that were needed by the region. The Northwest would not be what it is today without hydroelectricity from the region’s dams. The flood widened Hells Canyon but did not deepen it. These questions were at the center of the debate over whether to go ahead with construction of four dams on the lower Snake River, a river with prolific salmon runs. In the 1890s, a huge copper deposit was discovered at Eureka Bar in Hells Canyon. By altering historic river flow patterns dam operations also led to changes in the Columbia River plume into the ocean, an important rearing area for juvenile salmon and steelhead. Opposition from the Legislature, the Washington Department of Game, and sport fishing groups was strong. Especially in the headwaters and the other mountainous areas strewn throughout the watershed, the gray wolf, grizzly bear, wolverine, mountain lion and Canada lynx are common. The Oregon chub is also found in the Umpqua River and nearby basins. [63], The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–06) was the first American group to cross the Rocky Mountains and sail down the Snake and Columbia rivers to the Pacific Ocean. One contemporary diarist crossing near Salmon Falls complains of "exorbitant" fees at the crossings that were a "constant drain" on the travelers purse. . Gem State History. For though this history will be mainly confined to the present narrow limits of the County, it ought to be known to those who may read it that Orange was once a principality in extent, embracing in her limits five prosperous states of the Union, and parts of two others. [79], Passenger and freight service downstream of Lewiston lasted throughout the late 19th century and persisted until the introduction of railroads in the Palouse Hills grain-growing region and ultimately, the construction of dams on the lower Snake to facilitate barge traffic, which caused the demise of both the steamboats and the railroad. On the western extremity for a short stretch the Continental Divide separates the Snake watershed from the Bighorn River, a tributary of the Yellowstone River, which the Snake begins near. At the same time, the Atomic Energy Commission supported Ice Harbor, and the manager of the federal government’s Hanford Works, concerned that the Bonneville Power Administration might not be able to meet Hanford’s growing power need and the growing needs of the Northwest, suggested that the dam could be the exclusive power source for the Commission at Hanford. The Grand Coulee Dam also blocks spawning grounds to the famous "June Hogs" – the legendary Chinook salmon that have weighed over 100 … Inundation of shoreline areas in some parts of the Columbia River Basin, the Umatilla Reach of the Columbia behind John Day Dam and Hells Canyon of the Snake River, for example, wiped out historically productive spawning habitat for fall Chinook salmon. July 31, 2020. Another writer similarly notes several days travel through "a desert so desolate and rocky that we almost regretted that we had not continued on the south side of that stream". [70] However, the area was eventually annexed into the United States. However, as many as five dams were under consideration for the river. [12], Ten amphibian and twenty species of reptiles inhabit the upper Snake River's wetland and riparian zones. The Legislature took the extraordinary step of declaring a salmon sanctuary on the Cowlitz in an attempt to block the dam, but the city fought a protracted legal battle that went to the U.S. Supreme Court three times before the city finally prevailed. These floods pooled behind the Cascade Range into enormous lakes and spilled over the northern drainage divide of the Snake River watershed, carving deep canyons through the Palouse Hills including the Palouse River canyon and Palouse Falls. Dams block passage of salmon and steelhead between spawning and rearing habitat and the Pacific Ocean. At the base of mountains and in the Lost River basin, sagebrush was and is the predominant vegetation cover. There are 14 fish species found in the Upper Snake region that do not occur elsewhere in the Columbia's watershed, but which do occur in Bonneville freshwater ecoregion of western Utah, part of the Great Basin and related to the prehistoric Lake Bonneville. In the summer of 2006, the Snake River reportedly only had 3 sockeye salmon that returned to their spawning grounds. In a 1995 article about salmon and dams, High Country News interviewed Floyd Dominy, 84, who was commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation during the Columbia River Basin dam-building frenzy of the 1950s and 1960s, and then-current commissioner Dan Beard, who was known for his anti-dam leanings. “Extensive evidence indicates that breaching the four lower Snake River dams would provide more certainty of achieving the kind of long-term … Lewiston Dam virtually eliminated Chinook salmon runs into the Clearwater Basin. These are not all recent impacts, and the impacts are not limited to those from hydroelectric dams. After the first irrigation dams on the river began operation in the first decade of the 20th century, much of the arable land in a strip a few miles wide along the Snake River was cultivated or turned to pasture, and agricultural return flows began to pollute the Snake. Its average discharge at the mouth constitutes 31% of the Columbia's flow at that point. The Missoula Floods, which occurred more than 40 times between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago, were caused by Glacial Lake Missoula on the Clark Fork repeatedly being impounded by ice dams then breaking through, with the lake's water rushing over much of eastern Washington in massive surges far larger than the Lake Bonneville Flood. Some contrivance or contraption, from hatcheries to fish-passage facilities, always was considered adequate to mitigate the impacts so that progress would not be stalled. [9] The Snake River rises in western Wyoming, then flows through the Snake River Plain of southern Idaho, the rugged Hells Canyon on the Oregon–Idaho border and the rolling Palouse Hills of Washington, emptying into the Columbia River at the Tri-Cities, Washington. Sophistication varied from reed boats pulled by Indians on horse back at Snake Fort, Fort Boise, as described by Narcissa Whitman[74] in 1836 to an electric operated ferry, the Swan Falls Ferry,[75] at Swan Falls Dam of the early 20th century. Irrigators in the Snake River Plain would likely need to allow less water into the Snake River during low flow in order to create a current in the four lower reservoirs, and recreation and tourism would likely benefit.[109]. [71] Numerous ferries have provided crossings of the upper Snake from the Brownlee Ferry at the head of Hell's Canyon[72] to Menor's Ferry,[73] which operates today at Moose, Wyoming. In 2000 the Oregon Water Resources Department declared the aging structure a “high hazard dam,” which meant it could be condemned if it is not rehabilitated. In 1946, for example, one year after Congress authorized construction of “such dams as are necessary” to provide slackwater on the lower Snake River to improve conditions for navigation and barge traffic, the question was how many dams. The Four Lower Snake River Dams Improving Salmon Passage, February 2002 Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District; The Snake River is the principal tributary to the Columbia River, draining approximately 109,000 square miles in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Washington, and Oregon. There are at least 21 snail and clam species of special concern, including 15 that appear to exist only in single clusters. Spinning at just under 80 revolutions per minute — or whatever velocity produces electricity at the standard 60 cycles per second — the runners create tremendous water pressures. In his excellent history of Bonneville Dam (Water Power in the Wilderness, 1997), William Willingham, the former Corps of Engineers historian, writes, “The tradeoffs in the tug-of-war between the demands of power production and the needs of fish conservation, exemplified in the effort to improve fish passage at the Bonneville second powerhouse, continue challenging the Corps’ fishery management program.”. The Snake River has fifteen dams and is extremely difficult for salmon to access because of hydroelectric dams. However, there are almost no wild sockeye salmon left in the river due to a number of factors. Introduced birds include the gray partridge, ring-necked pheasant, and chukar. Current Fish Passage at the Lower Snake River Projects. Above Jackson Lake, Wyoming, the discharge is about 885 cu ft/s (25.1 m3/s) from a drainage area of 486 square miles (1,260 km2). [65][66] The name "Lewis Fork", however, did not last.[64]. The party later traveled north, descended the Lemhi River to the Salmon and attempted to descend it to the Snake, but found it impassable because of its violent rapids. [31] In places, water exits from rivers at rates of nearly 600 cubic feet per second (17 m3/s). The future was bright, he said, because most of the watershed already had been logged, trees and vegetation were growing back, and so habitat impacts should be minimized in the future. Columbia River, largest river flowing into the Pacific Ocean from North America. (Prior to the removal of Lewiston Dam on the main Clearwater and Grangeville Dam on the South Fork Clearwater, the Clearwater was completely unusable by migrating salmon. How prescient he was. Today, the river might be more accurately described as a gentle giant. 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