increased production to 2,000 cases a day at 

 each cannery. 



After the fish wheels came gill nets, purse 

 seines and trollers. Bigger boats and better 

 techniques extended the commercial fishery 

 into the Pacific Ocean. Salmon were speared 

 and hooked, netted and trapped, occasionally 

 even dynamited. 



Within three generations, the numbers of 

 returning salmon had dwindled dramatically. 

 As early as 1894, an Oregon Fish and Game 

 magazine predicted, "It is only a matter of a 

 few years under present conditions when the 

 Chinook of the Columbia will be as scarce as 

 the beaver that once was so plentiful in our 

 streams. [They are quickly] disappearing and 

 threatened with annihilation." 



The impact of overharvest was compounded 

 by the construction of dams along the Colum- 

 bia and its tributaries. The first dams were built 

 in the early 1900s to control floods and provide 

 water for irrigation. But the Federal Power Act 

 of the 1920s and the New Deal Era of the 1930s 

 held a vision of hydropower development that 



/' 



would change the Columbia River forever. 



Hardly any major stream of the 260,000- 

 square-mile Columbia River watershed was left 

 untouched. The 1,214-mile "raging river" 

 known by the early Indians and settlers has 

 practically become a back-to-back series of 

 reservoirs from the Canadian border to Bon- 

 neville Dam near Portland, Oregon. Less than 

 200 miles of the United States portion of the 

 Columbia River remain free-flowing. 



Fifty-five — including 30 federal — dams 

 were built to supply cheap electricity, irriga- 

 tion water and provide flood control. By the 

 time they were all in place in the late 1970s, the 

 situation had become critical for some salmon 

 and steelhead runs — and too late for others. 

 Some stocks disappeared completely. 



Fish ladders were built at most of the federal 

 dams to provide passage for adult salmon 

 returning to upstream spawning grounds. But 

 engineers thought Grand Coulee Dam on the 

 upper Columbia was too high for fish ladders. 

 Hell's Canyon Dam stopped salmon and steel- 

 head from traditional spawning grounds on the 



Dams & Lost Salmon Habitat on the Columbia River 



Backgrounder 



