A Little History, Hydropower and the Columbia River

A Little History, Hydropower and the Columbia River

Don Ames

The Columbia River cuts through the eastern part of Washington State and along the Oregon and Washington border to the pacific ocean. At The Dallas, an Oregon town on the banks of the mighty Columbia, about 120 miles inland from Portland, Oregon, there is a hydroelectric dam. Formed behind the dam is a large resevoir called Lake Celilo. When the dam was built and the waters began to form Lake Celilo, the resevior slowly engulfed Celilo Falls. Celilo Falls had been a social and commercial site for Native Americans for tousands of years. If you google Celilo Falls looking for images, you will see many pictures of Native Americans fishing for salmon from platforms built around the falls.

The Dallas Dam is one of the newer dams on the Columbia River. Most of the dams were construced for hydroelectric power, but the main reason for the construction of The Dallas Dam was to further commercial traffic on the river. Celilo Falls was just too much of a road block. In fact, for the need of electric power and commercial river traffic, there has been so many dams built on the Columbia River that the only free flowing section of the river is a section near the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State. How many dams have been built on the Columbia River drainage basin? All together, 239.