stories of comings and goings hang in the mist like ghosts coyote and Meadowlark took a rope and stretched it across the river and they walked down a river trying to figure out when they wanted to drop the rope and create the Willamette Falls stare for a while and you sense an atmosphere of promise of potential it was a focal point it was a gathering spot it was a place of power and each culture that has come through got to the falls and stopped and thought about how they could best utilize what nature had created a fluke of geology Willamette Falls elbows 1,500 feet across the river that shares its name and rises four stories high I really believe this is one of the great geological secrets of North America it is the second largest waterfall in the United States volume wise the only one being bigger is Niagara Falls people don't even realize that human history has concentrated around this natural feature in unusual abundance Indian people have been at the Willamette Falls since time immemorial since thought of human people became conscious we've been there political and economic power and people's livelihoods have a bit and float at the Falls this hasn't moved since 1990 and is still sharp enough to cut trees got nervous how many million board feet of timber would down this river a state was born here or again this was the end of the Oregon Trail this is where people stopped and settled and this is where moving water revolutionized how people live forever there's so many firsts here that have implications not only nationally but globally the changed our way of life and it all started right in this little massive buildings that most people just drive by on 205 industry rose up around the Falls to the east in Oregon City a paper mill to the west another paper mill and one of the oldest power plants in the country alongside a historic canal and lock system altogether perhaps a hundred acres a small vibrant laboratory this was like NASA this was like the Silicon Valley and it really changed the world there's a lot of cascading water that's trying to knock you out of where you're trying to be it's pretty wild it's a dangerous encounter a strong sense of self-preservation is always there because you don't want to get swept underneath the rocks that's a bad deal so you're reaching into crevices and different openings and just feeling for tails or the fish's body if there were a mascot for Willamette Falls perhaps the lamprey would do every summer these ancient jawless fish returned from the Pacific Ocean to climb and swim their way back to fresh waters where they lay their eggs any lamprey that wants to spawn in the Willamette it's got to get over these falls biologists have installed a system of ramps to ease the journey but dwindling numbers across the Northwest have them concerned lamprey are still very much a mystery some of the basic information that we understand about salmon we're still years away from understanding with lamprey we've been working on a lot of those questions that lemon Falls this is the last remaining place in the 260,000 square mile Columbia River Basin where tribes can harvest lamprey for traditional subsistence to come back to places like this where you know that people have been coming back generation after generation after generation is kind of like knowing that you're home but in a much deeper sense like the place where you've always been it's deeply personal lasting just days the harvest is a sustaining ritual that reaches deep into history every time you're out here it's it's a little bit different and in the flows and everything can make it a fairly dramatic and frightening place to be you feel like you've moved back in time it wasn't lamprey that first drew European traders to the area it was a demand for beaver to feed the fashion of the day in the 1820s while managing trade in the region for the Hudson's Bay Company John McLaughlin the man who had come to be known as the father of Oregon seized an opportunity he understood the false formed a natural dam and a reservoir with untapped energy that could turn of wheel and generate horsepower he got to the Falls and immediately sets about industrializing it he digs a mill race through the bedrock and puts up a sawmill probably the first sawmill west of the Mississippi and that enabled him to mill timber to build buildings and start a community that becomes Oregon City by harnessing the force of cascading water McLaughlin sets in motion a chain reaction of development in 1841 the first wagon train of the Oregon Trail Alive's think about it a family setting out across the country into the unknown and they finally got to Oregon and they got to the falls and they went it okay we're done Oregon City was founded because it was the end of the trail there was an obstacle to going any further Willamette Falls obstacle and opportunity with a humble start McLaughlin establishes Oregon City as the seat of government for the Oregon Territory the first incorporated town west of the Missouri it soon hosts a literary society and opera and the first newspaper this side of the Rockies the Oregon Spectator advertises that a wagon and four horses could cross the river to fast-growing Linn City for seventy-five cents the Falls was the center of a bustling place but so it had been for a great many years I think people don't realize that the Oregon Trail ended there at Oregon City and Willamette Falls but there was 14,000 years of history of people living in that place and making a home there before that trail ever existed you cannot be a person without all those generations before you building up to who you are we're not isolated individuals we're a culmination of history tribes from the Grande Ronde Siletz and Warm Springs and from the Yakima nation cherish their historic ties to the Falls that was one of the major trading hubs so it became a real important place not just for the folks who lived there but for everyone else in the region who came there to trade it was a crossroads with a well-stocked pantry the salmon the salmon was the main reason you know it was a place where you didn't have to go looking for your food it came to you you just had to be ready when it got there so makes a good place to live since the Falls was mostly impassable to fish the waters below held a bounty for fishermen all because of geologic chance beginning 17 million years ago magma spilling from the northeastern corner of Oregon poured 400 miles across the state and hardened into these basalt walls the basalt here was formed by one of the greatest volcanic eruptions on the face of the earth then starting some 18,000 years ago the Missoula floods among the largest ever scoured the 40-foot plunge energy people would seek to claim like miners after gold and harnessing that power really set Oregon on a totally different course we stopped being a pioneer State we moved to become a more industrial area Mills pitched up on both sides of the falls and industries flourished over the decades wool and grain timber and paper but their success depended on resolving a paradox manufacturers needed moving water but the false was a barrier for transporting goods and people travel up or down river meant going around at great expense that changed on New Year's Day 1873 this is the first Loxton canal built west of the Mississippi the opening of these locks broke the monopoly the controlled shipping on the lament and impeded the growth of agriculture all through the Willamette Valley it was a nine-month project funded by the state and local investors after a laborious excavation workers hand chiseled stone blocks to create a four chambered canal 40 feet wide and almost three-quarters of a mile long there would be pleasure craft travel craft stirring wheelers that were sort of the 747s of the era this was the freeway when the logs reached the Falls political power flowed to Portland but another form of power was about to be perfected here for most Americans living in the 1880s we still heated with wood you cooked with wood you illuminated your house with kerosene or with whale oil and electricity really didn't exist towns were small in 1889 three-quarters of the u.s. was rural Portland was a village of 44,000 for most people electricity was an impractical wonder electricity was really something of a parlor trick it was a novelty you had to live near where it was generated to take advantage of it because it couldn't be transmitted very far but that was about to change against the east face of Willamette Falls on this outcrop Portland entrepreneurs erected a modest looking facility and strung it with wire heading 14 miles downstream they brought in technologies that were untried and they set them out there in the water and kept their fingers crossed on the 3rd of June 1889 water spun dynamos at the Falls and Portland would become a city of lights these crumbling remains are the birthplace of the technology that created the 20th century a group of intrepid orgone Ian's had the crazy notion that they could take the power that was generated by the Willamette Falls and transmit it all the way to downtown Portland the first long-distance transmission of electricity in the history of the world it was a sweeping technological revolution the possibilities seemed without limit once the Willamette Falls were harnessed and we could produce electricity we had to figure out what to do with all of this power but you can't store electricity and so all of these new technologies spring up to take advantage of this source and the big one in Portland was trolleys electric trolleys just two years later Portland had 40 miles of streetcar tracks over the next three decades those numbers would double three more times meanwhile another industry was sleeping forward at the falls when it comes to pulp and paper manufacture the Falls are perfect you've got all of this power you've got all of this water and you're in Oregon where there are trees just down the road in every direction farmers in the Willamette Valley were eager to be rid of old-growth timber carpeting some of the nation's richest soils conveniently a Mill arises just west of the falls and its owners bring a modern ambition to use wood for making paper rather than rags and straw my family has been in his paper mill for 116 years and counting my grandfather started in this mill in 1896 he was a paper maker my dad started in 1932 and I started in 1974 I worked all the way from the bottom job up to the lead man the Foreman's job um ran every job I'm a fixer I I repair things pledge of up okay Chris for decades raised work looked much like what his father and grandfather knew our log rats came to us two city blocks long all day long we had we had trees that were 400 years old a single raft could move the load of a hundred log trucks we would take a whole log and we cut her down to small blocks of wood and then I went to the Grand room and they rounded into pole it was a very demanding job very demanding the woods of Western Oregon met their demise at the smell in this room in exchange for trees Mills made jobs and produced enormous quantities of newsprint for presses up and down the west coast and beyond and newspapers in that era was what bound us together as a community was how you knew what the president was doing and what the politics were of the day and what was on sale at the Piggly Wiggly the old saws at Westland Paper Company are silent now I was here the last day of this random and I got very quiet no more saws the war noise dead quiet yep I could hear the falls yet just steps from here the modern area of the plant operates 24/7 turning pulp from Canada into high-quality glossy paper for magazines and other publications it's one of the most resource and energy efficient mills in the region a second large paper company across the Willamette blue heron is closed and the original power plant at the Falls is an archaeological landmark but the complex that replaced it in 1895 on the west side of the river continues to generate electricity it too made history the company that would become Portland General Electric asked George Westinghouse to construct generators larger than any he'd built before Westinghouse was doubtful but he was a business man he said gee I don't know if that's gonna work I'll make them for you but I won't guarantee that they'll function they worked as splendidly Westinghouse became a brand name for a prosperous new industry and the utility had the largest generating facility in the state today the T W Sullivan plant is among the oldest continuously operated hydro plants in America T W Sullivan was a hydro engineer of incredible caliber and vision with intuition creativity and a slide rule he was the man who powered Portland for half a century Sullivan's presence may still be felt in the passageways I've never believed question is supernatural when I was working down here by myself had that strange feeling that I wasn't Jack Phillips operated the plant from 1979 until he retired a decade later there was a lot of work took a lot of maintenance to keep those those old generators running where would we be without electric energy after the Sullivan plant went on line change came quickly to the region it served in 1905 Portland hosted the Lewis and Clark expedition the unofficial World's Fair electricity was a premier attraction the Lewis and Clark expedition was on the west coast certainly the first time electricity had really been used in such a outspoken kind of a way everything was lit up Thomas Edison strolled the concourse with Vice President Charles Fairbanks and with Henry good president of Portland General Electric Oregon got discovered once more people came the world came millions of people saw what Oregon had to offer within five years of the expo Portland's population jumped more than 50 percent and everybody floods in the city grows the demand for power grows and it really sets Oregon on a course to become what it would in the 20th century despite epic changes wrought by human ingenuity Willamette Falls remain subject to the whims of its river and during the major floods that have occurred in the past the Falls disappear in 1964 the willamette topped its banks in a flood that generations will remember again 96 the river surged in the falls mostly vanished beneath course improves historically only during flood events could large numbers of fish find a way over today adult salmon use a passageway managed by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and with pges help young ones pilot downstream and out to the ocean I think in many ways you can say that the Sullivan hydro project has been a pioneer in a laboratory for fish passage the utility has developed a system that moves fish around the falls and past the dangers of spinning turbines the North fish bypass is a funnel which basically pulls fish that are in our four Bay around the hydro project and to the tail race it's a big water slide this has some of the highest survival of any powerhouse in the region welcome news for those who take an interest in fish the salmon are calling me right now I need to be there ray remembers the first time he caught a salmon just around the corner well 1966 I was 12 years old and I caught it on an apple knocker it's a lure you don't see anymore that's a nice fish every one of these things makes me shake it's just there's something about it whoa they fight that's a damn flama Falls is where I grew up fish it all my life I love the sound of it I love the scenery um I'm getting emotional it's impossible to know how many lives have intersected with these basalt walls and the structures around them they all sort of combined into one agglomeration where all kinds of things were powered by the fact that water is falling and a steady stream 365 days a year 24 hours a day and we could capture that power and use it to do things to make things to build things this is a place where thousands of years of history ticked to the clock of moving water the sounds the sounds the roar it's a melody I love it it reminds me of the voice of my grandfather as the river flows so our own presence continues into the future at Willamette Falls I certainly hear a future I really do you you
I will!
Edit: I did!
Cool, that was interesting.
Thank you for posting!!