The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce

by William Denison Lyman

Memorial Building, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash.
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.

And now we must retrace our course after this long detour through the productive land bordering the tributaries of the River or we can in imagination fly on the wings of the south wind, which almost always blows across the Inland Empire, and find ourselves again at Wenatchee in order to resume our interrupted journey down the River. From Wenatchee to the foot of Priest Rapids, about sixty miles, there is no regular steamboat communication. We can, however, use the same means of transportation that we have hitherto used so liberally, imagination, and upon that airy and convenient ship we can descend the swift and tortuous stream. The fur brigades used to trust themselves to the skill of their paddles and boldly descend the rapids, seldom meeting with disaster. There are three principal rapids in this section of the River, Rock Island, Cabinet, and Priest. In the first the River is very narrow and split in sunder by ragged pinnacles of basaltic rock. At first observation it looks a reckless thing to push a boat out into the white water whirling through these fantastic points of rock. Yet a bateau or canoe skilfully handled will plunge like a race-horse down the foaming stretch, and emerge below bow down with little water aboard and inmates intact. Steamboats have both descended and ascended this rapid, though it is considered a somewhat dangerous performance. Cabinet Rapids are less picturesque and interesting than Rock Island, but they offer even more serious obstacles to navigation, the channel being narrow and the water shallow. The river has cut this part of its course through the great plateau, and its banks on either side are rocky walls a thousand feet high, with occasional sandy stretches, sad, barren, and monotonous. There is, in fact, not so much to catch the eye or enlist the interest of the tourist (if he were here) in this dismal expanse of rock and sand as there is either above or below. It is practically uninhabited. But as we proceed upon our way the banks fall away, wider expanses of land appear, and we discover an occasional band of cattle or a settler’s hut on the generally bare, brown prairie. We are now approaching the longest rapid and the most serious impediment to navigation in the whole course of the River from Kettle Falls to Tumwater Falls. This is Priest Rapids. It is ten miles in length and represents a descent in the River of seventy feet. It would certainly be impossible of navigation by steamboats, were it not that the descent is distributed quite uniformly over the ten miles and the River in general is quite straight and with a fair depth of water throughout. The old voyageurs had little difficulty in racing down, and they seem to have usually ascended by cordelling their bateaux beside the rocks, and at some especially difficult places by lightening the load and carrying around. Steamers have both ascended and descended, but it is so slow and tedious (on one occasion requiring a steamer three days to ascend the ten miles) that it cannot be considered commercially navigable. It will doubtless become necessary to construct a canal and locks at this point to render the River continuously and profitably navigable.

Alexander Ross, in his Adventures on the Columbia, tells us how Priest Rapids came to be named. The first expedition of the Pacific Fur Company, of which Ross was a member, was making its way from Astoria up the River in 1811, and had reached the lower end of this fall. While reconnoitring and making preparations for proceeding, a large body of Indians gathered, watching operations with great interest. Among them was a fantastically dressed individual, with many feathers on his head, who was going through some kind of a performance which the explorers conceived to have a religious significance. Considering him a priest, they named the rapids thus.

Starting the Ploughs in the Wheat Land, Walla Walla, Wash.
Photo. by W. D. Chapman, Walla Walla.

The country around Priest Rapids is barren and unpromising in its natural state, but just below the foot of the rapids is one of the most interesting irrigation projects in the State. Along the west side of the River for twenty-five miles extends a belt of the most fertile land. An immense pumping plant run by electricity, which in turn is generated by the current, has been put in at the foot of the rapids. By this the water is conducted over the twenty thousand or more acres of land available, and it is the expectation that within a few years a dense population will line the river bank and repeat on a larger and finer scale the miracle of redemption by water already performed at various points on the River and its tributaries. Several town sites, of which the chief is Hanford, named from the president of the company, have already been laid out, and investments both in town property and orchard land are being rapidly made. The same process of irrigating is becoming inaugurated at many points from Hanford for a hundred and fifty miles down the River. It is plain to the observer that it is but a question of time when the shores of the River in this arid section will bloom and blossom like the rose, and repeat the history of Old Nile in massing of population and creation of cities and towns. It has been estimated that there are about a million acres of irrigable land contiguous to the River between Chelan and The Dalles. Since from five to twenty acres of irrigated land are ample to maintain a family, and since cities and villages are bound to grow on such tracts commensurate with their productive capacity, it seems probable that a million people will sometime live on this long belt of fertile soil redeemed by the River.

The beauty of irrigation on the Columbia is that it can be made to pump itself. For by taking advantage of such a fall as that of Priest Rapids (a half million horse-power at ordinary water), electric power can be generated by which limitless water can be raised sufficiently to cover any desired amount of land. Some have expressed the opinion that this process would exhaust the River, but this is hardly possible. For the great demands are in June and July when the River is at its flood. It has been estimated that at low water the Columbia at Celilo discharges 125,000 cubic feet per second, and at extreme high water, 1,600,000 cubic feet per second. Such a prodigious volume of water would be scarcely at all affected by any possible withdrawals.

The River from the foot of Priest Rapids is regularly navigated by several steamers connecting the new lands and towns with Pasco, the railroad centre seventy miles below. This section of the River is deep and tranquil, a superb watercourse. Below Hanford the River receives the Yakima River, which is the important agent in the irrigation of the great Yakima Valley. No one could say that he knew the Columbia River or the State of Washington without a visit to that valley, the largest in the State and the scene of the most extensive development in irrigated lands anywhere in the North-west. Three thousand carloads of fruit and vegetables were shipped from the Yakima in 1907. Buyers of Yakima fruits come from all parts of the East, from England, and even from France. Fortunes have been made in that fair land,—a fair land when supplied with water, but an arid waste without it. The United States Government has acquired control of most of the water system of the Yakima, and by means of storage basins in the mountain lakes where the Yakima and its branches rise, will be able to supply water for over a million acres of land.

On the Historic Walla Walla River.
Photo. by W. D. Chapman.