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would be fished to extinction. Oregon and Washington were unable to agree on salmon 

 fishing regulations for the Columbia, which forms most of the border between the two 

 states. And the runs continued to decline. In 1908 ~ this was even before my time, I'd 

 like to add — President Theodore Roosevelt argued for federal control of the fisheries: 



"The salmon fisheries of the Columbia River are now but a fraction of what they 

 were 25 years ago, and what they would be now if the United States Government 

 had taken complete charge of them by intervening between Oregon and 

 Washington. During these 25 years, the fishermen of each state have naturally 

 tried to take all they could get, and the two legislatures have never been able to 

 agree on joint action of any kind adequate in degree for the protection of the 

 fisheries." 



Even with presidential attention and constant nudging by Congress, it still took 

 seven years — it was 1915 -- before the two states finally agreed on joint fishing 

 seasons and created the Columbia River Compact. To this day, the Compact sets 

 fishing seasons in the lower Columbia. 



But even with this attention, the salmon decline didn't slow dramatically. For 

 example, commercial fishing took a tremendous toll, feeding canneries on the lower 

 river that shipped Columbia salmon literally around the world. 



And in the meantime, this region continued to grow — rapidly. Following the 

 Great Depression and the mass exodus from the Dust Bowl, the West was seen as a 

 land of opportunity. In 1932, on a campaign stop in Portland, Franklin Roosevelt told a 

 cheering crowd: 



"The next great hydroelectric development to be undertaken by the federal 

 government must be that on the Columbia River. It means cheap manufacturing 

 production, economy and comfort on the farm and in the household." 



And so the government accelerated dam-building on the Columbia and its 

 tributaries. Until that point in our region's history, dams in the Columbia Basin were 

 small and widely scattered. But no more. Thus began an era of dam-building — it 

 lasted into the 1970s ~ with giant public works projects like Grand Coulee and 

 Bonneville dams. 



The Columbia River Basin is ideally situated for generating hydroelectric power. 

 The Columbia is about 1,200 miles long, and from its headwaters in Canada it makes a 

 gradual, constant descent of about two feet per mile all the way to the Pacific Ocean. 

 Today, there are 58 hydropower dams in the Columbia River Basin. On the mainstems 

 of the Columbia and Snake, most of the big dams have fish passage facilities, but many 



