Place: The Dalles Dam, The Dalles, Oregon, United States

Description

The Dalles Dam is located near The Dalles Oregon and spans the Columbia River, linking Washington State and Oregon. The dam is a US Army Corps of Engineers project completed in 1959 to provide electricity to the Northwest. Electricity is sold to communities through the Bonneville Power Administration and to other states, including California and spurred rapid development in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Archeological digs prior to the completion of The Dalles Dam confirmed that Indian people had continuously occupied Celilo Village, named for the spectacular falls at the site of the dam, for at least 11,000 years and make it a claimant to the title of America's oldest continually-inhabited village at the time of its inundation. Creation of the dam was controversial, and treaty rights were unclear at the time of the destruction of this center for fishing and cultural meeting places for several Native American tribes. Fish ladders have proved to be an insurmountable barrier to migrating salmon, and this dam and others on the Snake and Columbia Rivers have caused salmon runs along the Columbia to be endangered to the point that all salmon fishing may be banned in US western coastal Pacific waters.