Bonneville Dam
Today the Columbia River below the Bonneville Dam was white with froth for a full half mile below the spillways. More than a quarter of a million cubic feet of river was passing the mighty dam each minute. Most of the water was being dumped dramatically through the spillways while a nearly equal amount went through the power house or down the fish ladders. Spring is an exciting time on the river. The salmon are returning in numbers to spawn. They make their way up the fish ladders which provide a route around the dams. The last of the snow is melting from the far away slopes where the river and all its many tributaries begin. The flow is high and the dams use what they can for power generation and dump the excess downstream.
Historically, fish catches were measured in thousand of tons while today each fish going upstream is counted and the numbers measure in the thousands. We visited the fish counting room at Bonneville. In the last ten years Chinook have averaged 310,000 fish per year. This years numbers look good with 243,00 to date. In 1883, 39 canneries packed 629,400 cases of prime Chinook salmon. In 1915 there were more than 2,800 gill net boats on the lower river and Astoria alone boasted nearly 100 canneries. The last one closed nearly thirty years ago.
While Bonneville was not the first of the dams on the Columbia it is probably the best known. Conceived as a part of Roosevelt's New Deal to put men to work and bring the country out of the depths of the depression, it ushered in an era of dam construction that would continue for four decades. By 1980 more than 212 large dams would dot the landscape of the Columbia River Basin. Collectively they are responsible for roughly fifty percent of all hydro power in the country, lighting cities as far away as San Diego.
In 1941, in an effort to gain support for the construction of more dams on the Columbia, the Bonneville Power Administration hired an little known folk singer named Woodie Guthrie to write songs to extol the virtues of the BPA's long range plans. Woodie wrote twenty-six songs in twenty six days for $266.
Your power is turning the darkness to dawn,It's roll on Columbia, roll on!
Today the Columbia River below the Bonneville Dam was white with froth for a full half mile below the spillways. More than a quarter of a million cubic feet of river was passing the mighty dam each minute. Most of the water was being dumped dramatically through the spillways while a nearly equal amount went through the power house or down the fish ladders. Spring is an exciting time on the river. The salmon are returning in numbers to spawn. They make their way up the fish ladders which provide a route around the dams. The last of the snow is melting from the far away slopes where the river and all its many tributaries begin. The flow is high and the dams use what they can for power generation and dump the excess downstream.
Historically, fish catches were measured in thousand of tons while today each fish going upstream is counted and the numbers measure in the thousands. We visited the fish counting room at Bonneville. In the last ten years Chinook have averaged 310,000 fish per year. This years numbers look good with 243,00 to date. In 1883, 39 canneries packed 629,400 cases of prime Chinook salmon. In 1915 there were more than 2,800 gill net boats on the lower river and Astoria alone boasted nearly 100 canneries. The last one closed nearly thirty years ago.
While Bonneville was not the first of the dams on the Columbia it is probably the best known. Conceived as a part of Roosevelt's New Deal to put men to work and bring the country out of the depths of the depression, it ushered in an era of dam construction that would continue for four decades. By 1980 more than 212 large dams would dot the landscape of the Columbia River Basin. Collectively they are responsible for roughly fifty percent of all hydro power in the country, lighting cities as far away as San Diego.
In 1941, in an effort to gain support for the construction of more dams on the Columbia, the Bonneville Power Administration hired an little known folk singer named Woodie Guthrie to write songs to extol the virtues of the BPA's long range plans. Woodie wrote twenty-six songs in twenty six days for $266.
Your power is turning the darkness to dawn,It's roll on Columbia, roll on!
