The Columbia River rises up high in the Canadian Rockies and during it’s 1,243 mile journey to the Pacific Ocean becomes the 4th largest river by flow in North America and dumps more fresh water into the Pacific than any other river in North or South America.
It is at risk in several ways, some of which can be fixed and some that can’t. The story of the Columbia is intensely personal to me, I grew up in ‘The Big Bend’ region of Eastern Washington and could go north, south or west to find the river.
Columbia Lake and the adjoining wetlands are the headwaters of the river in the Canadian Rockies. It runs roughly Northwest for it’s first 200 miles until it tumbles out of the Rockies and turns South. The river runs mostly south through eastern British Columbia before it enters the US near Kettle Falls. It continues to run south until it meets up with the Spokane River where it turns west.
The Columbia describes a huge C shaped course in Eastern Washington. West, then south before turning back to the east where it meets the Snake River and runs south to become the border between Washington and Oregon as it runs to the sea. It runs almost straight west to it’s mouth at Astoria, Oregon. The huge flow that is dumping into the Pacific and the shifting sandbars from the flow and the effect of the tides creates a difficult crossing for boats which is known to sailors as the Columbia Graveyard.
The Columbia has an average flow of 265,000 Cubic Feet Per Second at the mouth which makes it the largest river to empty into the Pacific from North or South America.
Columbia River Gorge courtesy the author
The geology of the Columbia River is relatively unique on earth. Millions of years ago the Pacific Northwest wasn’t a part of the continent that would become North America. The region was a series of islands whose tectonic plate crashed into the North American plate and dove under it from the force. Mountains rose, and the area fused into the NA plate completely. On the seam between the two was a ‘hot spot’ where the molten core of earth was (is) way closer to the surface than is normal. That ‘hot spot’ now is right under Yellowstone National Park.
Columbia River Gorge courtesy the author
The consequence of this tectonic action was lava. Lots and lots of lava. Lava gushed out of the earth at an unprecedented rate and very nearly completely covered what would become the Pacific Northwest. In some places the lava was a relatively thin layer but most of the region would be covered by lava to the tune of hundreds of feet thick.
After a few millena, the plate has continued to move while the hotspot has stayed in the same place. The intense pressure of one plate diving under the other has eased and the lava flows , haven’t happened in quite a long time. Hundreds of thousands of years. The next pressure on the region would come from ice. A mile thick sheet of the stuff in the last ice age. The ice formed in the polar region and spread south, smoothing and cleaning everything in it’s path. In some places the ice gouged the lava beneath it and lots of what we see as lakes today were formed.
In time, the earth warmed and the ice started to retreat. You can plainly see places where the junk that the ice pushed along stopped moving, it is called the terminal moraine. As the world warmed more and more the ice retreated faster and faster. The water that was released needed a way to get to the sea, so the river channels were carved. The story would end there except that some of that water flooded much of what is now Montana. About 15,000 years ago the ice dam that held that huge lake back burst and an incredibly huge amount of water headed to the Pacific. The flood carved canyons and a secondary river bed that produced the largest waterfall that has probably ever existed on earth. It is now the largest dry waterfall on earth.
Columbia River Gorge courtesy the author
Today’s river uses some of both: The original channel that it cut over the millena and some of the ‘quick cut’ canyons carved out by the flood. Two other ‘recent’ events have had an impact: A monster landslide in the area of the present Bonneville Dam completely blocked the river for a period of time in the last 500 years changing the depth and direction of the channel, and the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 reduced the depth of the shipping channel in the lower Columbia by as much as 25 feet (8m). These events let us see the Columbia as a constantly changing entity.
Indigenous people have inhabited the Columbia River Basin for at least 15,000 years. Though the anthropologists used to say the people of the Americas came here over an ice bridge during the last ice age, the evidence is starting to say otherwise. The indigenous people claim to have been here before the land turned cold.
We do know that the Columbia and it’s tributaries provided a real network for trade and cooperation over a very large piece of land. The switch to a Salmon based economy caused them to become more sedentary. Most of the river had ‘villages’ that were little more than family units. Prime fishing locations were places not so much under tribal control as tribal administered. The family unit was primary on the river.
The more sedentary lifestyle led to more leisure time and with it art. Baskets and pottery used to store food in became works of art. Trade was carried out over a very wide area as witnessed by artifacts from all over the Western US being found in the Columbia River drainage.
The Natives started getting horses shortly after 1700. By 1730 both the Nez Perce and Piutes had horses and were starting to change their ways to account for the added mobility. The Nez Perce didn’t completely separate from their river cousins, but they started hunting and trading buffalo that they took east of the Rockies for fish and other artifacts.
The Natives continued to fish the river and it’s tributaries into the 1940s when the dams on the Columbia flooded their historic fishing grounds. Today the tribes are allocated one half of any given run up the river.
It is widely believed that Japanese and Chinese explorers reached the shores of North America possibly as early as 2000 years ago. Spanish refugees from California certainly reached the area of the River in the late 1600s, but the first recorded foreign sighting of the Columbia River is Bruno de Heceta of Spain who noted the river’s mouth in 1775. The search for the Northwest Passage led to many British and Spanish ships exploring the area.
Tools of the River People courtesy the author
In 1792 American Robert Gray piloted the first ship to cross the bar and enter the Columbia River. Gray’s effort spearheaded the American claim to the region which was also claimed by Russia, Great Britain, Spain and France. The British believed that the Columbia was connected to the Missouri river and formed a true Northwest Passage.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-1805 put that notion to rest. They left St. Louis, MO and returned there 3 years later with detailed maps and samples and drawings of fauna and flora. They also permanently cemented the US claim to the Pacific Northwest.
Trappers, traders and settlers soon started pouring into the region. Within 50 years of the Lewis and Clark expedition the territory was well known if not completely settled. Indian uprisings led to many battles between the US Calvary and some of the tribes, including the last one in the US between the Nez Perce and the Cavalry where Chief Joseph uttered his famous line “From where the sun stands now, I will fight no more forever.”
The taming of the river started in 1836 with the first Steamboat on the river, the Beaver operated by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Ships still had to cross the bar at the mouth of the river but could off load cargo in Astoria, Oregon and the Beaver (and soon others) would haul the cargo up to the Cascade Rapids. By the late 1850s there were Steamboats operating on many stretches of the river and the settlement was rapid.
Soon, leaders started talking about a channel all the way to Lewiston, Idaho. Jetties on the mouth and dredging the channel of the river started in the second half of the 19th Century. Cascade Locks by passed the Cascade Rapids in 1896. By 1915 the construction of dams and barriers had started in the river and navigation by tugs and barges to Lewiston was successful in 1975.
Other dams higher up on the river produce vast quantities of hydro power and provide recreation and flood control. They also killed the salmon runs above Grand Coulee Dam and have left the Columbia River with only one free flowing stretch, the Hanford Reach.
Hanford Reach courtesy the author
Hanford. Used to be a little bitty town in Eastern Washington. It’s now a monstrous name in the minds of everyone that is anywhere near the river and a great many that aren’t.
Hanford, the town, ceased to exist early in the US involvement in WWII. A huge area in a hook in the Columbia River was taken by the US Government for ‘research purposes’. Turns out, the Hanford Reservation is where the government successfully created the Plutonium that was used in the first two (and all subsequent) nuclear bombs. It was an incredibly ambitious and secretive project that cost billions of dollars to provide the power that ultimately ended WWII.
But the cost. Hanford Reservation is now the most nuclear polluted site in the country and there is some waste stored there that is not only toxic, it is deadly. The waste was originally stored in one million gallon tanks that are leaking today. The plume of incredibly deadly chemicals is making it’s way to the river. Can it be stopped in time?
The Government is plowing money into the area by the boatload. Several new double wall tanks are now in service and the transfer from the old tanks is underway, but it is a necessarily slow and costly process. There are multiple decommissioned reactors scattered around, and those always pose a risk, too.
There are still top secret areas in the Hanford Reservation where research and development goes on. It’s got to be done someplace, and Hanford is there. There is little doubt that the entire reservation is a huge economic engine for the Tri-Cities area.
There is a group of people mostly north of the Hanford Reservation that are called ‘the Hanford Downwinders’. The government released a certain amount of very toxic particles to the atmosphere during the 40s and 50s. Some were accidental, but most were deliberate to see just how they spread in the atmosphere. A relatively small number of people were directly exposed. I am one of those. I am a Hanford Downwinder.
All in all, the Columbia is a glorious and powerful river that is the heart of a huge region. It provides water for irrigation and drinking to millions of acres both directly and indirectly. It is so much a part of my past that it feels like a relative.
While the words and ideas in this post are strictly those of the author two sources were referred to by me to insure numerical and historical accuracy.
Wikipedia: Columbia River
American Rivers: Columbia River
Unsourced Photos are used courtesy of the author.
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