Welcome to our series of stories about the Gorge to listen to as you travel through this unique place. Simply click on each button below. Happy travels!
BETWEEN PORTLAND & HOOD RIVER
Welcome to the Gorge
In Iowa, We Don't Have Anything Like This
Kevin Price, Park Manager for Oregon State Parks
Kevin Price spent 35 years managing Columbia Gorge parks, where a visitor once reminded him that nature steals the show at Rooster Rock, home to epic views, odd history, and Oregon’s only official nude beach.
My name is Kevin Price. I’m a past park manager with Oregon State Parks for 35 years. Focused most of my energy and efforts in the Columbia River Gorge.
Rooster Rock actually charges an entrance fee. And one particular day, I saw a vehicle drive over the overpass, pass all of the signs that say you have to pay, as well as the stop sign at the entrance booth. And the vehicle pulled into the parking lot.
And so I went out to address that situation. And my address was, good afternoon, sir. My name is Kevin Price.
I’m a park manager with Oregon Parks and Rec Department. The reason I stopped by today is I don’t see a valid day use permit displayed in your vehicle. And by the way, sir, you passed seven signs coming into the park stating you needed to pay.
Is there a justified reason for that today, sir? And this gentleman looked at me. He said, you know what? He said, I’m from Iowa. And in Iowa, we don’t have anything like this.
As we were standing there looking over the Columbia River, you know, the National Scenic Area, this is where the tribes flourish. And he said, so I have a question for you. And I said, yes, what is it, sir? He said, why the hell would I be looking at your signs when I’ve got all of this in front of me? And I smiled and said, that sounds like a justified reason to me, sir.
Because sometimes I looked at it from a management standpoint and not a user standpoint. So he was really able to educate me. You know, my response in my head was, why would he be looking at these ugly cream on brown signs when you’ve got the National Scenic? And again, in Iowa, we don’t have anything like this.
There is an actual rock formation, and that’s at the Boat Basin, and that’s Rooster Rock. Initially, Lewis and Clark actually gave it a different name. They actually phrased it as Cock Rock.
And a male rooster is a cock. So that’s the folklore of Rooster Rock. The park is utilized for group picnics.
It has over 1,200 parking spaces, and the parking lots run a distance of one mile from the east end of the park to the west end of the park. Rooster Rock is unique in the fact that it has a clothing optional beach at the east end of the park. You know, something very interesting I found out in working at Rooster Rock, there really is no law against nudity in society.
The reason that we can enforce nudity in Rooster Rock is because there is a designated area for clothing optional. So therefore, the rest of the park is not clothing optional. Otherwise, you really struggle with enforcing nudity in public, and I think there was a court case in southern Oregon where an individual wanted to mow his lawn nude and was able to win that case.
Woody Guthrie & the Columbia River Songs
Sarah Fox, Hear in the Gorge Podcast
This fascinating story is just one of the many that Sarah has researched and brought life through the Hear in the Gorge Podcast. If you like these first few minutes, click here to listen the full 30 minute story.
This is one of those stories that at first glance doesn’t seem to make any sense. Woody Guthrie is one of the most iconic folk singers in U.S. history. He sang about the Dust Bowl, he sang about the Great Depression, he wrote songs about what life was like for the common, everyday American.
And in the middle of it all, he spent one month in the Pacific Northwest. And in 30 days, he wrote 26 songs promoting dams on the Columbia River. And the government paid him to do it.
Which makes for quite a story. Feisty folk singer, the federal government, and songs about dams. But here’s the thing.
No one was telling it. Because for a long time, this story was lost. Most folks didn’t even know it existed.
And then four decades after it happened, a government employee in Portland, Oregon stumbled upon something he never expected to find. And then the story sprang back to life. You’re listening to Here in the Gorge, stories that will change your sense of place.
I’m Sarah Fox, and in this episode, we learn what happened when Woody Guthrie came to the Pacific Northwest and went to work for the government. And what it means to have a bit of our history in his words.
[Click here to listen to the full 30 minutes: https://soundcloud.com/hearinthegorge/woody-guthrie-the-columbia-river-songs-hear-in-the-gorge]
Multnomah Falls
The Bridge of the Gods Landslide Mystery
Scott Burns, Professor Emeritus, Geology, Portland State University
Geologist Scott Burns says the Bridge of the Gods landslide, long linked to Cascadia quakes, was likely triggered by a smaller local earthquake 4,000 years ago—making it the most studied landslide in the Pacific Northwest.
Scott Burns, I am a quaternary geologist, geomorphologist, and engineering geologist, 35 years at Portland State. So, 55 years ago I started teaching, the last 35 years here. On the Washington side and the Oregon side, lots of landslides have occurred over the time, and I will talk a little bit about those later on.
Now, when you go through Cascade Locks, you have the most studied landslide in the Pacific Northwest. We call it the Bonneville landslide, or the Bridge of the Gods landslide. Why is it the most studied landslide in the Pacific Northwest? Well, we built our first dam on the Columbia River, Bonneville Dam, with one abutment on this landslide, and you don’t want that landslide to be moving.
So, we studied it to see when was the last time it moved, and does it have the potential for moving again? Because it did come all the way across, it dammed up the river, and then it breached at the area around Cascade Locks. It’s always been a big question for us, and we’ve dated it, and it’s about 4,000 years ago that the Bonneville landslide came down. I always thought it was caused by one of the Cascadia earthquakes.
Well, that doesn’t line up with any of the Cascadia earthquakes. Ashley Streig, who is a professor in our department, was studying a fault that goes up the edge of Mount Hood, along with a couple of scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and students from Portland State. They trenched this fault, and they found that the age on that fault is just the same time as the age of the Bridge of the Gods landslide.
And so, we believe that the Bridge of the Gods landslide was created by a local earthquake, maybe a five or a six, that occurred in the gorge and shook the unstable slopes, and it came down. So, that’s our current idea today. Now, 20 years from now, we may have something different, but that’s what we’re thinking today.
Cascade Locks
Tribal Fishing Rights and the Four Powerful Words
Buck Jones, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission
Buck Jones, a Cuyoosh tribal member and 21-year veteran of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, honors the foresight of his ancestors, who secured fishing rights in the 1850s treaties—hard-won protections that still defend tribal sovereignty in court today.
Yeah, my name is Buck Jones. I’m an enrolled Cuyoosh tribal member, one of the bands of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and for the past 21 years I’ve been employed with the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission. In the 1850s, the government came out with treaties for the tribes.
They had met with the treaty to move us to reservations, to move our tribal members to reservations, and so what our ancestors and our treaty signers had the fortitude of negotiating these treaties is that, you know, we had to cede millions and millions of acres of our land, and reluctantly, yeah, they said, we’ll cede those, you know, those millions of acres to move on to these reservations, but we’re not going to sign these treaties without our hunting and fishing and gathering rights. We want to retain those fishing and hunting and gathering rights at our usual places that we fished. It actually says usual and accustomed places, so that was a really key situation because treaties are the supreme law of the land and in those treaties we retained those rights and it was signed into the treaties, and that’s really upheld our rights to hunt and gather and fish where supreme court case decisions were made because of these treaties and upheld, you know, different, there’s been different attempts to deny our fishing rights, and it hasn’t been perfect.
There’s been some erosion of some of those rights, but the signing of that treaty and having those those terms in there has really upheld our right specifically for fishing. Our member tribes have had these cases go through the local, then they went all the way to the supreme court, and they’ve been upheld, so that’s really, really, really key, you know, and I always think of the way tribes, tribal people think, they think of the seven generations ahead of them, and they think of the seven generations behind them, so those ones was looking out for us in these days, you know, when they thought through that because, you know, reluctantly they didn’t want to give up our land, but it was beyond that, so those signing those treaties with those those terms in there has been, has really been a key, and so that really allows us to have those treaty fishing rights.
Remembering Viento -
The Lively Town Lost to History
Kristen Stallman, Oregon Department of Transportation Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Coordinator for 10 years.
Stories from the oral history project.
I’m Kristen Stallman. I was the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Coordinator and had the privilege of a lifetime to work in the gorge for 10 years. As I worked in the gorge, I always was curious about the place names on Interstate 84.
Any flat land in the gorge I knew had likely been home to someone. These places were first inhabited by Native Americans, followed later by settlers. To find out about these now obscure places, ODOT launched the Historic Columbia River Highway Oral History Project in 2009.
The goal was to collect the memories of people, those that settled in the gorge along the Columbia River Highway before the modern highway was constructed. We wanted to understand what life was like in a slower, more connected time, and what we discovered was incredible. Take Viento, for example.
You might know it today as a small state park, but Viento used to be so much more. In the 20s and 30s, it was a thriving whistle-stop community, complete with a gas station, a store, including a small collection of houses, a one-room schoolhouse, and a park. We had the privilege of interviewing Darlene Stiles and her cousin, Valda Jones Dryden, both born and raised in Viento.
Their grandfather, J.O. Jones, operated the gas station and store with his wife. They lived in the back of the station with their eight children. Viento was a lively place.
The Jones family weathered the Great Depression together. All the kids came home and took whatever work they could, logging, fishing, working on the railroad. In one memorable attempt at entrepreneurship, Valda’s dad even tried raising foxes for fur.
The fur coat trend didn’t last, but every woman in the family got a fox stole for Christmas that year. One of the most touching stories Darlene shared was about her childhood friend, Jimmy, whose Japanese family lived in Viento and farmed asparagus. During World War II, fearing internment, his parents made the heartbreaking decision to return to Japan.
Darlene shared a photo of the Viento schoolhouse, Japanese children smiling out front in traditional kimonos. It was a powerful reminder of a time and community lost to history. Today, little remains, but if you walk the newly completed historic Highway State Trail, you’ll find subtle echoes of that past.
There is a beautiful new hiker-biker camp and a hidden gem, a surviving original mile marker from the old Highway 30. Next time you drive I-84 and see signs for places like Wyeth, Starvation Creek, or Viento, know this, they weren’t always just exits. People called these places home.
If you want to learn more about this project, just google Historic Columbia River Highway Oral History Project and you’ll find a link to that document. Thanks for listening.
Accessibility in the Gorge
Recreating a Destroyed Tunnel
Terra Lingley, Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Coordinator for ODOT
Mitchell Point’s steep basalt made transportation tough. The original tunnel was blasted away for I-84 but has now been rebuilt for hikers and cyclists—with modern safety features and the same five historic windows.
My name is Terra Lingley. I’m the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Coordinator for the Oregon Department of Transportation. Mitchell Point is this huge rock promontory in the Columbia River Gorge that kind of juts into the river and all of our transportation facilities have had to contend with this barrier as they built the railroad, as we built the historic Columbia River Highway, and then as Interstate 84 went in and then was widened.
It is basalt, which is really hard volcanic rock, and it’s quite high. So going over it is really difficult. Going around it wasn’t a choice for a long time because the river was there and prior to the Bonneville Dam coming in, the river would have wiped out anything that was at the river level.
It’s been a challenge for every single piece of transportation infrastructure that’s gone in. In the 1900s, when the historic Columbia River Highway was being built, they decided to do what they call a viaduct, which is a bridge over land into a tunnel to traverse the Mitchell Point. And that was the most direct way.
It didn’t require the vehicles to go down to the river level where the railroad already existed. It didn’t require vehicles to go up and around and over this really steep promontory. So a tunnel really was the most direct, I don’t want to say easy, but it was the most direct way to get folks through and to deal with that obstacle that was quite a challenge back in the day.
However, when Interstate 84 went in in the 1950s and then when it was expanded in the 70s later, the tunnel and the bridge were in the way. So when we expanded I-84, at first it was one lane in each direction, and when we expanded it to two lanes in each direction, which was the modern configuration of I-84 down below, we had to blast that cliff face back to provide room for the interstate because obviously the interstate wasn’t going to go up and over. Interstates are pretty flat and pretty wide and pretty straight.
The historic highway had already been closed around Mitchell Point because immediately they had rockfall problems. Mitchell Point is really crumbly style rock, and as they blasted and as they dug into it to build the original tunnel, that rock just didn’t, it wasn’t able to hold together. It kind of crumbles and pieces fall.
The tunnel was already closed by the time we needed to expand the interstate, and so it wasn’t being used, and so we made the decision back in the day to destroy the tunnel to provide room for the interstate. And then as we were coming through this area to connect the historic highway as a state trail, as a bicycle pedestrian facility, we went through all of the same calculations that they did 100 years ago. Can we go down at the water level? Can we go along I-84? Can we go up and over it? Those solutions were not great for a number of reasons, and the biggest challenge that we have is rockfall, which the designers 100 years ago also grappled with.
So we wanted to give a callback to what was there historically. We wanted to make it safe for all of our users. We wanted to maintain safety for Interstate 84 down below, and we ended up right back where we started with the tunnel.
That story is really compelling to me because as we recreate the historic highway state trail, we take elements of the original design. We take kind of the ethos and the aesthetics of the original highway and recreate it. The original Mitchell Point Tunnel had these openings, which they call adits, to let in light and air, and we worked with all of our partners and our community members, some of whom actually have memories of traversing the original Mitchell Point Tunnel, and they said, put those adits back, put those windows back in.
We’re going to need light. We’re going to need air for the state trail users, so let’s do what we can to make it as accurate as possible, and we ended up with the same five openings or adits in the tunnel that were originally there. So that was really exciting to be able to bring it, kind of that through line, that historic through line, back to the new tunnel, even though it’s quite more engineering, more complex, more sturdy, honestly, than the original tunnel was.
There’s a lot of engineering that went into that tunnel. We have steel arches that support the entrance. We have concrete that was kind of blown onto the inside surface of the tunnel, so we didn’t have that crumbly rock problem.
We have rock bolts, so we have steel beams that are drilled through the rock and then tightened down, kind of like a staple, to hold the larger chunks of rock together. The original designers did it really well, but I would argue that we did it better. We improved upon their original design and have created a wonderful opportunity for folks to get out into the gorge
Hood River
Mayor
As Humans, We're Hard on the Earth
Kevin Price, Park Manager for Oregon State Parks
For 35 years, Kevin Price walked the line between welcoming visitors and protecting nature—often facing the hard truth that too much love, like at Oneonta Gorge, can destroy the very places people come to enjoy.
My name is Kevin Price. I’m a past park manager with Oregon State Parks for 35 years. One of my biggest challenges as an Oregon State Park manager is I was a recreational provider, but I was also a natural resources steward.
Those things don’t typically mesh well, because as human beings, we’re hard on this earth. And I used to marvel, we’d look at these pristine coves that we were thinking about as an agency purchasing. And I turned to the deputy director and go, do we really want to buy this and invite people in to screw it up? Because we, as human beings, will screw it up.
And the only example you need is Oneota Gorge. And what happened to that whole, because I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Oneota Gorge. It’s a hike back, but it got such overuse, the Forest Service had to close it down.
And that’s unfortunate. So anytime we don’t provide access, I think that’s a shame. But unfortunately, it’s needed sometimes.
You know, I’d marvel about our trails, people would cut across or down the hill. And I’d always think, you came out here for exercise. And now you’re going to, you know, and as the old saying says, monkey see, monkey do.
So what we would see is deterioration of some of our trails, because people were taking shortcuts, being courteous to others, leashing your animals, because some individuals feel, my animal wouldn’t hurt anything, but little do they know that some individuals are afraid of animals. And so just being courteous and concerning parking, and parking legally, and not illegally, as well as pack it in, pack it out, removing your trash. And there are trash receptacles at some of our trailheads.
But if not, we just ask that individuals pack it in and pack it out.
Getting Around Car Free
BETWEEN VANCOUVER & BINGEN
Stevenson, WA
Paddling For Their Lives
Dr. Rick Cromey, Lewis and Clark Historian
In 1805 and 1806, Lewis and Clark braved their final rapids near Bonneville, passed Beacon Rock, stopped at a village of the Watlala people, and mapped their epic journey—Clark was only 40 miles off after 4,000 miles!
Well, my name is Dr. Rick Cromey, and I’m a Lewis and Clark historian. Well, let’s go ahead and get started with Bonneville and take a look at the next chapter in this great, I almost want to call it a float, but these guys are paddling for their lives, at least in the fall of 1805 as they’re heading towards the Pacific Ocean. The next spring, they’re also paddling for their lives, but they want to get home to see their mamas.
It’s been a long, cold winter down there at Clatsop, and they’re ready to go home and see mom and dad and get home to some good home cooking. They’re kind of tired of eating that poor elk meat, as they call it down there at Clatsop. But as they’re going down, they’re going to be in the Bonneville area.
This is, again, to the west of Cascade Locks and down in the Multnomah Falls area as well. They’re going to be there around November 2nd as they’re heading downriver and April 6th to the 9th as they’re coming upriver. So, this is really their last rapid that they’re going to have run into.
They’re going to make note of that, that really this is the last one they have to go through. They do have to take some of their loads out in order to portage around it as well. So, it’s noted in the journal coming down.
They mention, again, Beacon Rock as they head through this particular area. They talk about a Watlala village that they come through, and they found nine houses within this very small native village. They’re paddling through it very rapidly right now.
Coming back upriver, it takes a little bit more time. Obviously, Beacon Rock, they mention again. They do talk about flooding a bit more as they’re moving upstream.
They talk about there must have been some sort of a spring flood going on. They notice the water’s different. This was something to keep in mind.
We talk about how the water has changed a lot, especially since the dams have come through. Most of us don’t realize that Portland used to flood every single year. But when they put Monteville Dam in in 1937, one of the positive things about it was they could literally regulate the water flow that kept Portland from flooding.
And of course, when they put the dams in further upriver, they’re able to manipulate the water all the way down, allowing also for irrigation of the area. That’s something we often forget about. We often think about these being hydroelectric dams.
A lot of power comes off of these dams, but also they allow for irrigation. I always look at Umatilla, that dam or McNary Dam up there by the Umatilla Indian Reservation. That’s amazing because if you look up from the air, all you see are cornfields and other green fields all the way around it, but it’s dry everywhere else.
But because they’re close to the dam there and that water is built up behind, they can irrigate that year-round. Corn requires a lot of water as a vegetable, and they’re able to do it there with that particular water that’s close. So, but they had a high spring flood going on down by Bonneville at that point, and they make note of it.
Again, they note, again, the Beacon Rock. Lewis calls it only—he says it’s only 700 feet. Of course, Clark calls it 800 feet.
Clark’s going to be right. He had this amazing—they called it dead reckoning. Clark had this uncanny ability to look downstream to look at things and be able to tell you exactly how tall it was, how much around it was, you know, the radius of it and such, or how far away it was.
That’s how he measured the mileage. He’s the one that’s doing all the mapmaking. And he could look downstream and say, well, it’s about a mile to that next marker or that rock or that little bend in the river.
And when they get down to Clatsop, he measures it out. 4,162 miles is what he maps from St. Louis all the way to Clatsop. And when cartographers came around later, they found out he’s only off by 40 miles.
So, this is pretty amazing that he’s able to do this with so much accuracy
Fish Wars
Buck Jones, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission
For 21 years, Buck Jones has fought to protect tribal fishing rights—rights hard-won by Native activists who faced arrest and prison to defend their sacred waters, leading to landmark victories like the Boldt decision.
Yeah, my name is Buck Jones. I’m an enrolled Cuyoosh tribal member, one of the bands of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and for the past 21 years I’ve been employed with Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission. You know, later in our history was some of the fishing wars that happened with our tribal members.
There was both in the Puget Sound area and then the Squally River, with Patway Billy Frank, you know, was a leader of fishing, you know, fishing for people using those treaty rights that, you know, that this was, this is something that was, you know, granted to us and got arrested quite a few times or whatever, you know, by the states. And at the same time this was happening down on the Columbia River at Cook’s Landing with the Sohapi family and some different tribal members from Yakima, in the same sense, you know, this is our treaty fishing right, where fishing was our right, you know, to fish. And, you know, they got arrested as well and served federal prison time to uphold our treaty fishing rights, you know, that is a really important part of our history, you know, that they, you know, sacrificed you know, time in federal prisons that, you know, that kind of in a way was unjust or whatever, but it is part of our history and that is, you know, something that I think a lot of our tribal members, you know, they know, but there’s some people that do not know about these battles that we’ve had, you know, that these people have had or whatever, you know, and it wasn’t, um, and so that really was really an important piece, you know, and that was some of, you know, through some of the treaties that was signed that they was able to, you know, to uphold, like I say, just go do fishing like that, that was promised by the U.S. government.
Our commercial area, you know, is like I said, it’s called Zone 6 and it’s a reserved right, from the treaties that, you know, that’s where the four-member tribes can fish and that’s 147 miles between Bonneville Dam, it starts at Bonneville Dam and goes all the way to McNary. A key decision, you know, was the Bolt decision by Judge Bolt who upheld the tribes were allowed 50% of the harvestable catch of the species and that was system-wide, you know, and system-wide meaning like all the tribes in the Puget Sound and in the Columbia River were allowed 50% of the catch of this, whether it be shellfish or whether it be salmon, so that really was a real key moment and the tribes were fishing, you know, regulations.
White Salmon, WA
Baby Volcanos and Gentle Giants
Scott Burns, Professor Emeritus, Geology, Portland State University
The Columbia River Gorge was carved over millions of years by river flow, uplift, landslides, volcanoes, and massive floods, leaving dramatic cliffs, quiet giants like Mount Hood, and exposed volcanic cores like Beacon Rock.
Scott Burns, I am a Quaternary Geologist, Geomorphologist and Engineering Geologist. The Columbia River Gorge is from the Columbia River and the Columbia River has been flowing for the last 20 million years and has been emptying into the ocean and we get deposits from that all the way from Newport, Oregon all the way up to Willapa Bay, Washington. And so, the river would go down to the coast.
Now, the coastline was much further inland because the Juan de Fuca Plate has uplifted all of those old marine sediments. That’s what we call the coast range today. But we know that the Columbia River Gorge has been around for a long time and the Columbia River has been flowing through it and as the mountains are uplifting, the river is downcutting.
And so, you’ve got the incredible gorge that we have got. I wanted just to mention a little bit about the volcanoes that are on both sides of the river, on the Washington side. We have Mount St. Helens.
That is the baby volcano and when it erupted on May 18, 1980, it came out of its snoozing from the past and now it’s into a cycle and every five to ten years it erupts. And then to the south of the Columbia Gorge, we have Mount Hood, a gentle giant. It is not an explosive volcano like Mount St. Helens was in the past.
And it had its last eruption, oh, back in the 1800s and it’s just on the lower flanks of it and it is not a violent type of volcano. They’re just lava flows coming out from different places on the mountain that you have got. And so, Mount Hood, gentle giant, Mount St. Helens on the Washington side.
And then when you look up the gorge, you have the Oregon side, the Washington side. The Oregon side is straight up and down, whereas the Washington side is at a very, very low angle. Why? Because all of the low angle stuff are landslides.
It’s just one continuous huge landslide complex as you’re going up the gorge. And then when you get Cascade Locks, you have the Bridge of the Gods landslide, which is the most famous of all of the landslides that you have got. Going up the gorge, you have Beacon Rock, which is on the Washington side.
And you guys will be taking people by Beacon Rock quite a bit. It’s the heart of an old volcano and it’s associated with the boring lavas. When you look at it, you can see the nice columnar jointed flows that are exposed there.
The Missoula floods that came through at a later period of time eroded away most of the volcano, leaving that central core, what we call the volcanic pipe, sticking up. But I think it’s 59,000 years old is the age that we have on Beacon Rock volcano.
BETWEEN HOOD RIVER & THE DALLES
Mosier Mayor Loves Transit
Arlene Burns, Former Mosier Mayor
Arlene shares how expanded Columbia Gorge transit options—including bike and wheelchair access—are transforming travel in the region, making car-free trips to places like the airport easier than ever.
My name is Arlene Burns and I’ve been here in Mosier since the early 90s and I was actually mayor for many years. I got on city council I think in 2014 and became mayor shortly thereafter until the beginning of 2024. I just bought my pass for $40 for a calendar year.
You can use the Columbia Gorge transit system anywhere, any of their buses. You just show them your pass and it’s good and for the very first time the other day coming back from the airport I took the MAX train for four stops and then went to the gateway transit area and got on the bus for the and we are so lucky to have this now. It’s really a shapeshifter especially if you need to get to the airport and don’t want to leave a car there or don’t have a ride there and I hope more and more people will take advantage of it.
Also they can carry your bikes, they can carry wheelchairs, so for the most part there is less and less reason to get in your own car.
Mosier, OR
Stories from the First and Only Black Park Manager
Kevin Price, Park Manager for Oregon State Parks
Kevin Price, the first Black park manager in Oregon State Parks’ history, spent 35 years working to make the Columbia River Gorge and other park areas more inclusive, advocating for workforce diversity and community engagement while navigating institutional challenges.
My name is Kevin Price. I’m a past park manager with Oregon State Parks for 35 years, focused most of my energy and efforts in the Columbia River Gorge. And one of my goals was to help the system, the organization, and fellow park managers understand maybe a need to be more welcoming because I, as the first and the only black park manager in Oregon State Park history, I’d get pushback.
And I would hear things like, well, we don’t do anything special for any other groups. Why do we have to do anything special for this group? And my response was, well, perhaps they haven’t felt welcomed. And so being more welcoming, that’s a good thing, right? And you know, it really is a challenge to get the majority white system to understand that people like to see people who look like them when they come and visit.
And so maybe diversifying your workforce is not a bad thing, but a good thing. And I was able to work closely with the African American Outdoor Association. And we would schedule events, rides along the historic Columbia Highway State Trail, camping at different parks, Milo McIver, as well as coastal parks.
And I still remember one particular incident, well, two at a park, it was Fort Stevens. And I had called and tried to make a reservation for the summer months, one weekend at one of their group sites. And the response I got was, oh, no, no, we’re too busy, can’t do that.
And I said, you can’t give up one site for a group that I’m trying to facilitate. Nope, can’t do it. And then I received a call after we were still able to get them in a different way and camp.
And they were selling Confederate flags in the gift store. And I had to laugh when I brought it to their attention to show you how sometimes we don’t put ourselves in other’s shoes. Their resolution was, we’re going to allow the friends to sell what they have.
And then we won’t buy any more. And I kind of smiled and said, you know, that’s an insult. That’s a slap in the face.
If you’re still willing to sell what the Confederacy, and what does the Confederacy have to do with Fort Stevens on the Oregon coast? So, you know, I’d say to you, it was a real challenge being the first and the only Black Park manager. Because as I mentioned in previous videos, I felt like I was planting the seed for hopefully future Black Park employees. So therefore, I saw myself as not being able to fail.
Because if I did, then others might say, see, we told you so. They don’t really belong in these positions.
Suddenly Meadows Start to Appear
Barbara Robinson, renowned conservationist known for her decades-long dedication to protecting the Columbia River Gorge
Barbara Robinson, a longtime conservationist, describes the dramatic ecological shift along the Columbia Gorge—from lush forests to arid grasslands—and how the 1986 National Scenic Area Act helped protect the unique oak, pine, and wildflower habitats between Hood River and The Dalles.
I’m Barbara Robinson, and I have been involved in conservation in the eastern part of the Columbia Gorge, Hood River to the Dalles, mostly since 1969 when I first saw it. If you’re on the bus going from Hood River to the Dalles, you see an amazing change of ecology, because in Hood River and west of Hood River, you get dense forests of especially dead fir, maybe cedars, solid forests pretty much. And then starting from Hood River, you see there are meadows, especially on the north side of the river, which gets more sunlight because there’s south-facing slopes.
Suddenly meadows start to appear where it’s maybe too shallow soil, but also too dry for the trees to grow. And the trees change. They change faster on the Washington side, again, because it gets that sunlight more, but it changes from dead firs to oak trees and ponderosa pines, and more and more meadows as you’re going to the east.
And then when you get to the Dalles, you get no trees at all after the Dalles, especially on really both sides of the river. That’s because you’re going from, in Hood River, about 30 inches of rain a year to about 13 inches of rain a year at the Dalles. So it’s an amazing, quick change in the ecology and what can grow there from dense forests in Hood River to no forests at all east of the Dalles.
And in between this beautiful ponderosa oak country, it’s like nothing else in the Gorge. When the Gorge Bill happened in 1986, there was almost no public land at all between Hood River and the Dalles. There was nothing on the Washington side.
And on the Oregon side, there was a little bit at Mayer Park and a little bit at Mammaloose. That was it. The Gorge Bill allowed purchase of land in this beautiful oak pine wildflower meadow area to save some of this ecology, too.
So when you’re at Catherine Creek or when you’re in the Mammaloose area or up on Seven Mile Hill, just realize that a lot of that is possible because of the National Scenic Area Act and the purchase of land that happened after 1986.
The Dalles
Like A Flowing Stone
Scott Burns, Professor Emeritus, Geology, Portland State University
Scott has been studying geological hazards around the world, especially in Oregon and Washington, for 50 years.
Scott Burns. I am a quaternary geologist, geomorphologist, and engineering geologist. So the story of the Columbia Gorge, Tale of Two Floods.
The first floods were the Columbia River basalts. The second one were the Missoula floods that you have got. So the majority of the rock that is found in the gorge is basalt.
It’s a black rock. It’s volcanic. But where did it come out of the ground? It came out where Oregon, Washington, and Idaho come together.
And it was very similar to the volcanoes that you have on the Big Island of Hawaii. Not explosive, just big cracks in the ground, magma coming out, and then flowing. Up in southeastern Washington, you have maybe 20 to 30 flows, one on top of another, over a thousand feet thick of basalt.
As you come down the gorge, you can still, like in Multnomah Falls, you have six or seven major flows that are there, one on top of another. All of that basalt coming out of the ground where the three states come together. Columbia River basalt is just a huge eruption.
Started about 17 million years ago, ending about 10 million years ago, with the majority of it coming out between 16 and 14 million years ago, one flow on top of another. When I take people up the gorge, geology, I say it’s a tale of two flows. The first one, the basalt flows, over 300 different basalt flows forming the Columbia River basalts.
And the second floods that you have got are the Missoula floods. And all of those basalt flows, many of them made it all the way down to the Oregon coast. Cascade Head, Yaquinda Head, Cape Lookout, are all flows that came across the state.
Now, there’s one little curio shop that is down there, and one of them and I’ve been in there to say, we live on a volcano. I said, no, you live on volcanic rock. The volcano was 400 miles away.
And so, Lateral Falls, Multnomah Falls, you can just see one flow on top of another on top of another. The dominant rock that is found in the Portland area is basalt. It’s a black rock.
But periodically, you will go into a quarry and see a big white boulder. What is that? Well, it’s granite. There is no granite around here.
How did it get here? It was ice rafted in on, it was part of the ice dam that broke up over 50 times up there in the Ponderay Valley. And it was a piece of granite that fell on top of the glacier. And then when that piece of the glacier formed an ice raft, it floated all the way down and then it melted out.
And so that’s why we have granite, all the big boulders up and down the Columbia River and then up and down the Willamette Valley that we have got. The most famous of these ice rafted erratics is the Willamette meteorite, the largest meteorite ever found in the United States. It was found just down outside of West Lynn at 400 feet elevation.
Why? Because we believe that it was ice rafted in on one of these erratics in the past and then deposited on one of these ice rafts at 400 feet. And then it was found in 1902, eventually made it to the World’s Fair in Portland in 1905, and then back to the Museum of Natural History in New York City, where you can visit it today. When you go out to the east side of Portland, as you go through Troutdale and up through the gorge, you’ll see huge fields of boulders.
Why are these? Well, these were bouncing around on the bottom of the old ancient Missoula flood waters that were coming into Portland. That’s basically bottom load that is there that has been excavated out.
10 Reasons To Buy Local Foods
Eileen White, Manager of The Dalles Farmers Market
Shopping local keeps more money and food fresh in the community, supports the economy, and builds connections.
Hi, Eileen White here, Market Manager for the Dallas Farmer’s Market. Hey, did you know that for every $100 you spend at a farmer’s market, 62 of that stays in the community, 99 stays in the state. When you spend that same $100 at the supermarket, only 25 stays in the community.
When you shop with our local farmers, they keep 72% more than when you buy from a middleman. You know, it’s better for the local economy on every level. 50% of our groceries are controlled by only four retailers.
80% of the beef is processed by only four companies. If something goes wrong in one of those, the impact is much greater. Why it’s so important to eat local meats from local farmers.
Ninety-eight percent of the food that we eat in the gorge is shipped from other areas. That makes us vulnerable in the case of an emergency or a crisis where we can be cut off from our food supply chains. If only 20% of the fruits and vegetables and meat we consume in the gorge were purchased directly from local farmers, we’d keep $9.6 million in our local economy.
The average piece of produce that you buy at a supermarket travels seven days and 1,500 miles. That’s not fresh. That doesn’t even count the time on the shelf or the time in the back room before they put it on the shelf.
When you shop at a farmer’s market, your food is more nutritious, more delicious, fresher. Fresh means less waste, more money in your pocketbook. There’s less packaging, less wear and tear on our roads, less pollution, all because it comes local.
When you’re shopping at a farmer’s market, the average person has ten interactions with fellow shoppers. Only three at a supermarket. That interaction is what makes us human.
It helps our social and psychological health, and that leads to better physical health. And one of the best parts about shopping at a farmer’s market is the average person has ten interactions with your friends and neighbors as opposed to only three at a supermarket. Thanks for listening.
I look forward to seeing you at the next market. Shop local, shop fresh.
BETWEEN GOLDENDALE & THE DALLES
Goldendale to The Dalles
Mother Nature Was Shouting Out, "Huge Floods!"
Scott Burns, Professor Emeritus, Geology, Portland State University
The Columbia River Gorge was dramatically reshaped by repeated Ice Age Missoula Floods that carved deep canyons and deposited rich soils across the region.
So the story of the Columbia Gorge, Tale of Two Floods. The first floods were the Columbia River basalts. The second one were the Missoula floods that you have got.
I’d like to mention a little bit about the Missoula floods. And the whole idea for the Missoula floods came from a guy named J. Harlan Bratz, who was a geologist. He taught a little bit at the University of Washington.
Most of his career was at the University of Chicago. And J. Harlan Bratz came up with this idea that there was a large flood. But when he did that, he was going against the thinking of the day.
As he would travel across eastern Washington, he would see these huge valleys. And Mother Nature was shouting out to him, big floods. But everybody said, where’d the water come from? And he didn’t know.
Just outside of Wenatchee on the Columbia River, you have what is called the giant current ripples on West Bar. And Mother Nature is shouting out, huge floods in the past. As you go across eastern Washington, there are areas where all of the loess, the windblown silt, has been eroded down to bedrock.
But then there are little islands of hills of these we call Palouse Islands or Palouse Silt Islands. And everybody said, why do you have some areas that are scoured and other areas with very, very thick windblown silt? Then you go to the Potholes area in the Quincy Basin. And oh my God, they’re just huge erosional structures everywhere.
Mother Nature is shouting out, huge floods in the past. And then as you go over towards the western end of eastern Washington, you have the two large coulees, the Grand Coulee and the Moses Coulee. And these are huge valleys that have been cut.
And then if I wish you could see my Landsat photo, you can see all these huge coulees and valleys across eastern Washington. These are all from the Missoula floods. And then if you go up to Montana, and just outside the city of Montana, and I’m showing a picture of there, you can see on the side of the hill, lines going across.
These are the strand lines of the old glacial Lake Missoula. It was about half the size, the volume size of Lake Michigan today. And it was dammed up that skinny part of Idaho, the Pend Oreille Valley.
Ice was coming down by the glaciers and the ice dam dammed up the major river draining western Montana, the Clark Fork River. It created a lake all the way back to we call it ancient Lake Missoula. And then eventually that lake dam broke, and all of that water of glacial Lake Missoula, half the size of Lake Michigan, completely emptied in probably a week.
All that water went down through Spokane and across eastern Washington scouring out all these coulees and the Channel Scablands. All the water got back into the Columbia Gorge at Wallula Gap. That’s where the Columbia River comes into Oregon today.
Then all that water came down the gorge. The gorge has always been there for the last 20 million years. It just widened it and deepened it as it went all the way down to Portland, then hit the west hills of Portland.
Some of it went out directly into the ocean. Some of it went through Lake Oswego and carved out Lake Oswego and filled up the Washington Valley, creating a large lake there. And then all that water got back in and also the Willamette Valley filled up.
All that sediment that was eroded from eastern Washington was deposited in the Willamette Valley. You got over 100 feet of sediment at the north end and 50 feet of sediment at the south end. All the silt that was eroded away by the Great Missoula floods deposited in the Willamette Valley, and that’s why Willamette Valley has such great soils for agriculture.
Then all those floods went out into the ocean. And so you have the Channel Scablands at eastern Washington with Moses Coulee, Grand Coulee, the Cheney Palouse Scablands, all of that carved by the Great Missoula floods. Now the dating on these, the Missoula floods, we originally found pieces of wood and we dated those, and those came out 15,300 to 12,700 years before present radiocarbon years.
Now what we do is we take radiocarbon years and convert them into real years because we have found that the radiocarbon years diverted from real years going back in time. And so basically we say that the Missoula floods occurred between 15,000 and 18,000 calendar years ago, 15,000 to 18,000 years ago. There is evidence maybe of a couple of them 19,000 years ago.
40 floods made it to Portland, 90 floods made it to Spokane. The first flood was the biggest one. Each one was getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
Why? Because the ice dam was getting smaller and smaller that would reform after each one of the floods because the glacier was coming down the Pend Oreille Valley, and the top of the ice was going down each one of those. We also have evidence of ancient cataclysmic floods, that is similar floods that came through eastern Washington. In my book on Cataclysms on the Columbia, the Great Missoula Floods, what we have got is we don’t know how many of these floods that occurred during the last two million years.
We know there are at least five to ten floods, but there may be 20 to 30. We have evidence of sediment being deposited in eastern Washington and going up and the deposits coming out. And you can count the different number of floods that you have at Burlingame Gulch in Tushe, Washington.
As you go up in the gorge just past the Dalles and you park your van right next to the Columbia River, you can look across into Washington and you can see how high the floods got because it has eroded the silt, the windblown silt on the hills. On the other side, I’ve got a great slide showing that. In the lower part, it exposes all of the Columbia River basalts.
So you’ve got Columbia River basalts next to the river and then Loos, the windblown silt up above. And if we were up, for instance, very close to the Dalles, we were waiting for the first Missoula flood to come down, it would probably take about a day to fill up that gorge and then it would flow for over a week, completely filling up that gorge during that period of time. So the Columbia River has been around for 15 to 20 million years, but the Missoula floods widened it and deepened itSo the story of the Columbia Gorge, Tale of Two Floods. The first floods were the Columbia River basalts. The second one were the Missoula floods that you have got.
I’d like to mention a little bit about the Missoula floods. And the whole idea for the Missoula floods came from a guy named J. Harlan Bratz, who was a geologist. He taught a little bit at the University of Washington.
Most of his career was at the University of Chicago. And J. Harlan Bratz came up with this idea that there was a large flood. But when he did that, he was going against the thinking of the day.
As he would travel across eastern Washington, he would see these huge valleys. And Mother Nature was shouting out to him, big floods. But everybody said, where’d the water come from? And he didn’t know.
Just outside of Wenatchee on the Columbia River, you have what is called the giant current ripples on West Bar. And Mother Nature is shouting out, huge floods in the past. As you go across eastern Washington, there are areas where all of the loess, the windblown silt, has been eroded down to bedrock.
But then there are little islands of hills of these we call Palouse Islands or Palouse Silt Islands. And everybody said, why do you have some areas that are scoured and other areas with very, very thick windblown silt? Then you go to the Potholes area in the Quincy Basin. And oh my God, they’re just huge erosional structures everywhere.
Mother Nature is shouting out, huge floods in the past. And then as you go over towards the western end of eastern Washington, you have the two large coulees, the Grand Coulee and the Moses Coulee. And these are huge valleys that have been cut.
And then if I wish you could see my Landsat photo, you can see all these huge coulees and valleys across eastern Washington. These are all from the Missoula floods. And then if you go up to Montana, and just outside the city of Montana, and I’m showing a picture of there, you can see on the side of the hill, lines going across.
These are the strand lines of the old glacial Lake Missoula. It was about half the size, the volume size of Lake Michigan today. And it was dammed up that skinny part of Idaho, the Pend Oreille Valley.
Ice was coming down by the glaciers and the ice dam dammed up the major river draining western Montana, the Clark Fork River. It created a lake all the way back to we call it ancient Lake Missoula. And then eventually that lake dam broke, and all of that water of glacial Lake Missoula, half the size of Lake Michigan, completely emptied in probably a week.
All that water went down through Spokane and across eastern Washington scouring out all these coulees and the Channel Scablands. All the water got back into the Columbia Gorge at Wallula Gap. That’s where the Columbia River comes into Oregon today.
Then all that water came down the gorge. The gorge has always been there for the last 20 million years. It just widened it and deepened it as it went all the way down to Portland, then hit the west hills of Portland.
Some of it went out directly into the ocean. Some of it went through Lake Oswego and carved out Lake Oswego and filled up the Washington Valley, creating a large lake there. And then all that water got back in and also the Willamette Valley filled up.
All that sediment that was eroded from eastern Washington was deposited in the Willamette Valley. You got over 100 feet of sediment at the north end and 50 feet of sediment at the south end. All the silt that was eroded away by the Great Missoula floods deposited in the Willamette Valley, and that’s why Willamette Valley has such great soils for agriculture.
Then all those floods went out into the ocean. And so you have the Channel Scablands at eastern Washington with Moses Coulee, Grand Coulee, the Cheney Palouse Scablands, all of that carved by the Great Missoula floods. Now the dating on these, the Missoula floods, we originally found pieces of wood and we dated those, and those came out 15,300 to 12,700 years before present radiocarbon years.
Now what we do is we take radiocarbon years and convert them into real years because we have found that the radiocarbon years diverted from real years going back in time. And so basically we say that the Missoula floods occurred between 15,000 and 18,000 calendar years ago, 15,000 to 18,000 years ago. There is evidence maybe of a couple of them 19,000 years ago.
40 floods made it to Portland, 90 floods made it to Spokane. The first flood was the biggest one. Each one was getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
Why? Because the ice dam was getting smaller and smaller that would reform after each one of the floods because the glacier was coming down the Pend Oreille Valley, and the top of the ice was going down each one of those. We also have evidence of ancient cataclysmic floods, that is similar floods that came through eastern Washington. In my book on Cataclysms on the Columbia, the Great Missoula Floods, what we have got is we don’t know how many of these floods that occurred during the last two million years.
We know there are at least five to ten floods, but there may be 20 to 30. We have evidence of sediment being deposited in eastern Washington and going up and the deposits coming out. And you can count the different number of floods that you have at Burlingame Gulch in Tushe, Washington.
As you go up in the gorge just past the Dalles and you park your van right next to the Columbia River, you can look across into Washington and you can see how high the floods got because it has eroded the silt, the windblown silt on the hills. On the other side, I’ve got a great slide showing that. In the lower part, it exposes all of the Columbia River basalts.
So you’ve got Columbia River basalts next to the river and then Loos, the windblown silt up above. And if we were up, for instance, very close to the Dalles, we were waiting for the first Missoula flood to come down, it would probably take about a day to fill up that gorge and then it would flow for over a week, completely filling up that gorge during that period of time. So the Columbia River has been around for 15 to 20 million years, but the Missoula floods widened it and deepened it
Lovely Clumps of Balsomroot
Barbara Robinson, renowned conservationist known for her decades-long dedication to protecting the Columbia River Gorge
Conservationist Barbara Robinson reveals how balsam root meadows—icons of spring in the Columbia Gorge—take decades or even centuries to grow, underscoring why these “old growth meadows” are so rare, fragile, and vital to protect.
I’m Barbara Robinson. I’ve been involved in conservation, especially wildflower conservation and oak conservation in the Columbia Gorge since 1969. In 1987, I started a piece of research to see if balsam root could be re-established in places where it had been grazed off because cattle, sheep, things like that do like to eat balsam root.
And you see lots of areas where there’s balsam root on one side of the fence and none on the other side of the fence. That’s called fence line contrast. So I did research and I found that it took an average of 10 years for a balsam root seed to become a plant that had flowers on it.
And not only that, it was 14 years before I noticed any babies around those plants. Maybe they came in a year earlier, but basically it was 13 or 14 years. And the babies were all within about, or most of them were within four or six feet of the main plant because balsam root seeds don’t have flyers on them.
Now, maybe it’s possible voles or ground squirrels or something like that stash them and can carry them further. But in my research, I didn’t see lots of evidence of that. I saw that most of the baby plants came around the adult plants.
And so it’s now been almost 40 years since I did my plantings and I have lovely clumps of balsam root, but it hasn’t spread over the whole area at all. So what I’ve learned is when you see a big field of balsam root, it probably took hundreds of years or maybe even thousands to develop that field. Lupins, which often accompany the balsam root, the purple lupins, making it so beautiful, come in a little faster, three to four years, but they take their time too.
So I consider a field of balsam root an old growth meadow, something that took a long time to develop and it needs preservation. These fields need respect. Balsam root seeds don’t have flyers.
As I said, they can’t move that far that fast. So where you have a field of balsam root, it’s nice if we could somehow preserve that so people can enjoy it. Once it’s torn up, it will take another hundreds of years to develop.
In lieu (of Us Flooding Your Villiages and Fishing) Sites
Buck Jones, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission
For over 20 years, Cuyoosh tribal member Buck Jones has fought to protect Native fishing rights on the Columbia River, where long-overdue “in-lieu” and treaty sites now stand as both lifelines and battlegrounds for displaced tribal families.
Yeah, my name is Buck Jones. I’m an enrolled Cuyoosh tribal member, one of the bands of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and for the past 21 years, I’ve been employed with the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission.
When the first dam started in the 1930s, the dams flooded our traditional fishing sites and some of our villages.
So the government promised that they would rebuild and they would find these sites, find sites to replace those sites that was flooded. The government did keep its word, but it only took them 50 years to uphold that promise that they would rebuild those sites. So there was originally five in-lieu sites, you know, in lieu of us flooding your traditional villages and your fishing sites, they found some land.
And it was a work between, you know, the government, the U.S. Army Corps, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the tribes. And so they originally had five in-lieu sites, and those in-lieu sites being at Cascade Locks, at Fort Raines, and at Wind River, Cook’s Landing, and Lone Pine. Two of those sites in Oregon, on the Oregon side, and the other three are in Washington.
And so they built these sites, and then throughout the years they identified more land for more access sites. Because our fishing area is now what’s called Zone 6, and I mentioned the dams. So they start at Bonneville Dam and go all the way up to McNary Dam.
That’s considered Zone 6, you know, the fishing, the river is identified in areas starting at the estuary, at the mouth, that’s like Zone 1. And as you move up the river, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, and then when you get to Bonneville, that’s Zone 6. So that’s our reserved area for any kind of commercial fishing that is done there. It’s only done by the tribes. You know, there’s sport fishing that’s done by the non-tribal in both states of Oregon and Washington.
But the same groups that I mentioned identified some different lands throughout that Zone 6 fishery, and came up with an additional 28 sites that became, the first ones was Inlew sites, and then the remaining are called treaty fishing access sites. And a little bit about those sites, that there is a, usually there’s, at some of the lower river sites, there’s communal restrooms and showers that they have. And then there’s usually a fish cleaning station, net racks to repair nets, some camping.
There’s usually water access to the river, and actually potable water that they drink. And then as you move up farther up the river, there may be not as many amenities. There may only be, you know, access to the river, and, you know, maybe an outdoor toilet, and some camping slip areas.
So this was really built for seasonal use. But a lot of our tribal members that now live, now kind of live on those year-round, and I think this is a two-fold kind of process, that the reasonings for that. I think that one of the main reasons is that a lot of these tribal members, this is where their family is from.
This is where their lifeline is. You know, it is the Columbia River. They’ve had family members, like I mentioned, that have been on the river, you know, fishing their whole lives.
And this is where they are from. Even though they may be a member of a tribe, you know, of our member tribes, and those four-member tribes are, you know, Confederated Tribes, Umatilla, Warm Springs in Oregon, Yakama Nation in Washington State, and then the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho. And even though they are a member of the tribe, you know, they want to be here.
This is where they want to be or whatever. So they’ve kind of stayed at these sites. And I think another, the second part of that is that the affordable housing in the Columbia River Gorge is, there is no affordable housing.
You know, it’s a society kind of an issue too, you know, because like if you find an affordable housing, it is really, really, really difficult, you know. So that has been kind of a reason. Another reason is where they, now these sites have been lived in pretty much year round or whatever.
And, you know, there’s the conditions ain’t really the best sometimes, you know, but our people are, this is where, like I said, they prefer to be. And, you know, that’s kind of the history that on those treaty, in lieu and treaty fishing access sites.Yeah, my name is Buck Jones. I’m an enrolled Cuyoosh tribal member, one of the bands of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and for the past 21 years, I’ve been employed with the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission. When the first dam started in the 1930s, the dams flooded our traditional fishing sites and some of our villages.
So the government promised that they would rebuild and they would find these sites, find sites to replace those sites that was flooded. The government did keep its word, but it only took them 50 years to uphold that promise that they would rebuild those sites. So there was originally five in-lieu sites, you know, in lieu of us flooding your traditional villages and your fishing sites, they found some land.
And it was a work between, you know, the government, the U.S. Army Corps, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the tribes. And so they originally had five in-lieu sites, and those in-lieu sites being at Cascade Locks, at Fort Raines, and at Wind River, Cook’s Landing, and Lone Pine. Two of those sites in Oregon, on the Oregon side, and the other three are in Washington.
And so they built these sites, and then throughout the years they identified more land for more access sites. Because our fishing area is now what’s called Zone 6, and I mentioned the dams. So they start at Bonneville Dam and go all the way up to McNary Dam.
That’s considered Zone 6, you know, the fishing, the river is identified in areas starting at the estuary, at the mouth, that’s like Zone 1. And as you move up the river, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, and then when you get to Bonneville, that’s Zone 6. So that’s our reserved area for any kind of commercial fishing that is done there. It’s only done by the tribes. You know, there’s sport fishing that’s done by the non-tribal in both states of Oregon and Washington.
But the same groups that I mentioned identified some different lands throughout that Zone 6 fishery, and came up with an additional 28 sites that became, the first ones was Inlew sites, and then the remaining are called treaty fishing access sites. And a little bit about those sites, that there is a, usually there’s, at some of the lower river sites, there’s communal restrooms and showers that they have. And then there’s usually a fish cleaning station, net racks to repair nets, some camping.
There’s usually water access to the river, and actually potable water that they drink. And then as you move up farther up the river, there may be not as many amenities. There may only be, you know, access to the river, and, you know, maybe an outdoor toilet, and some camping slip areas.
So this was really built for seasonal use. But a lot of our tribal members that now live, now kind of live on those year-round, and I think this is a two-fold kind of process, that the reasonings for that. I think that one of the main reasons is that a lot of these tribal members, this is where their family is from.
This is where their lifeline is. You know, it is the Columbia River. They’ve had family members, like I mentioned, that have been on the river, you know, fishing their whole lives.
And this is where they are from. Even though they may be a member of a tribe, you know, of our member tribes, and those four-member tribes are, you know, Confederated Tribes, Umatilla, Warm Springs in Oregon, Yakama Nation in Washington State, and then the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho. And even though they are a member of the tribe, you know, they want to be here.
This is where they want to be or whatever. So they’ve kind of stayed at these sites. And I think another, the second part of that is that the affordable housing in the Columbia River Gorge is, there is no affordable housing.
You know, it’s a society kind of an issue too, you know, because like if you find an affordable housing, it is really, really, really difficult, you know. So that has been kind of a reason. Another reason is where they, now these sites have been lived in pretty much year round or whatever.
And, you know, there’s the conditions ain’t really the best sometimes, you know, but our people are, this is where, like I said, they prefer to be. And, you know, that’s kind of the history that on those treaty, in lieu and treaty fishing access sites.