Fish and Fishermen 231 



be provided for these multitudes of fish to rise sixty-five 

 feet from the level below to the level above the dam, and 

 for the resulting offspring to get safely back to the ocean, 

 was gravely doubted by many people. To the men charged 

 with carrying on the work, there was little alternative 5 they 

 had to accept the gamble and to do everything conceivable 

 to win. 



They prepared a project which called for the expenditure 

 of over six million dollars, along with the corresponding 

 man-hours of brain-work to make the plans and of muscular 

 work to carry them out. They placed their main reliance in 

 two gigantic fish ladders sweeping down from the top of the 

 dam in impressive curves like the imperial stairway of the 

 Fontainebleau Palace. Each pool in these ladders was forty 

 feet wide by sixteen feet long by six feet deep, and only one 

 foot higher than the pool below it. A one- foot jump is 

 nothing for a salmon, especially with deep water and a long 

 run to give it a take-off j the record leap is over eleven 

 feet J but, to make it easier, submerged openings from one 

 pool to the next were provided so that the fish could make the 

 entire ascent under water if they preferred. To supplement 

 the ladders, elevators with twenty by thirty foot shafts were 

 built, into which fish would be attracted by outflowing water 

 currents at the bottom for a free ride to the top. 



By May of 1938, when the sluice gates through which 

 the fish had been moving during construction were closed, 

 everything which the best engineers and fisheries experts 

 could think of to ensure passage of the salmon over the dam 

 had been done, but no one could guarantee success. The fish 

 ladders were certainly perfect from the physical point of 

 view, but would the fish enter them, or the elevators? Would 

 they follow the currents flowing from these sources, or would 

 they prefer the tailraces from the turbines and sit down in 



