136 



• Corps of Engineers and Navigation 



While the definition of Wild and Scenic rivers in PL 90-542 calls for 

 essentially primitive and undeveloped shorelines, the Snake River in Hells 

 Canyon doesn't fit the mold very well. With three dams above that trap 

 sediment, the beaches have largely disappeared. Flows are controlled by the 

 dams and change hourly. Even the river channel itself has been heavily 

 modified over a long span of time to enhance navigation by the large, deeper 

 draft craft that used to ply the river for commerce. The river was at one time 

 lined with ranches and farms, most now abandoned. Over 2,000 people once 

 occupied the Oregon side of the canyon alone in the early 1900' s; more worked 

 the Idaho lands. There were towns, schools, wagon roads, irrigation ditches, 

 orchards, fields and other features of civilization, many still visible today, even 

 in the Hells Canyon Wilderness. 



The first reference to modification of the river channel in the HCNRA 

 appears in a 1903 Lewiston Tribune article referenced in The Snake River of 

 Hells Canyon, Pg. 57. The article spoke of a trip by the steamboat Imnaha with 

 a "party of government engineers who would blast away the large rock in that 

 menace to navigation (Mountain Sheep Rapid)". In 1914 $25,000 was 

 appropriated for the Corps of Engineers to improve the river channel with 

 explosives (Snake River of Hells Canyon, pg. 63). From 1903 until designation 

 under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1975 the Corps of Engineers continued 

 projects to improve navigation of the Snake River in what is now the HCNRA. 

 This included blasting rocks, construction of diversions to channel water and 

 installation of channel survey markers as navigation aids from Lewiston to the 

 end of navigation improvements, 86 miles up-river. The balance of the river to 

 Hells Canyon Dam (18 miles) does not have survey markers. 



The Hells Canyon National Recreation Area Act of 1975 



In the 1950's and 60's there was little doubt in anyone's mind that a dam would be 

 built somewhere on the Snake River in Hells Canyon. The only question was which 

 dam or combination of dams would be constructed and who would build them, private 

 or public power. Those entities took their fight to the Supreme Court where Justice 

 Douglas wrote the Court's majority decision and read it on June 5, 1967, a decision 

 that brought both back to the drawing boards. 



The court opened the possibility that "the best dam for Hells Canyon might be no 

 dam at all. The test, wrote Douglas, is not solely whether the region will be able to 

 use the electric power. The test is whether the project will be in the public interest. 

 And that determination can be made only after an exploration of all issues relevant to 

 the "public interest," including future power demand and supply, alternate sources of 



22 



