If you have lived in Portland long enough, you will end up making a visit to visit the fish hatchery at Bonneville Dam, home to Herman the Sturgeon. The dams along the Columbia River system have hugely curtailed the once humongous runs of salmonids up and down the river and its tributaries. Overfishing definitely has a role to play in the depletion of the huge runs, but the hydroelectric – flood control dams have even more hugely impacted the once vast movements of fish. A recent visit to a small local waterfall brought to light part of the plight of the fish encountering physical obstructions to their journeys. One answer to the problem, fish ladders.
BONNIE FALLS
The waterfall in question stands on the North Fork of the Scappoose Creek in Columbia County of Oregon. The falls lies about an hour north of downtown Portland a few miles to the northwest of the little city of Scappoose. Bonnie Falls is not one of those jaw-dropping falls found in other areas of the State – think the Columbia River Gorge, Shellburg or McDowell Creek Falls, Silver and Golden Falls in the southern Coast Range or even Beaver Falls in Columbia County. It drops a mere 15 feet in a small basaltic canyon with the Scappoose-Vernonia Highway literally running along the top of the north side of the falls, though you cannot see it unless you pull off onto a small parking area along the south side of the road.
There is a bigger parking lot about a quarter mile further up the highway and the Bonnie Falls Trailhead for the Crown Zellerbach Trail – an excellent long-distance railroad slash gravel bicycle trail running over the tracks of an old forest railroad.
FISH LADDER
From the roadside parking along the highway, a small way trail goes down to offer up a view over the little waterfall. What makes the waterfall unique is the small fish ladder built along the side just to the north side of the falls. The fish ladder is one of three, I know of in Columbia County – all about similar in scale. Bonnie Falls Fish Ladder was the first of the three to be built dating to 1952. The ladder ended up costing $32,000 – equals $378.624 today in 2024 – so a good chunk of change for a county not awash in funds.
The waterfall pretty much kept the upper parts of the North Fork drainage system out of bounds for salmonids – 15 feet is a long way to jump, even for a fish as powerful as a salmon.
Columbia County must have decided to build the ladder to try and increase the area available for potential salmon spawning was worth the cost. Of the three fish ladders in the county, this one seems to be the one most kept up and monitored, probably due in part to ease of access. The other two – Goble Creek Falls and Clatskanie River – are much more difficult to reach.
CLOSER VIEWS?
Like most rainfed streams, the waterfall is best visited in the winter or spring when the flow is greater. I am not sure of water flows in the North Fork in the late summer, but hopefully it is still enough to keep water in the fish ladder since that is the time of salmonid migration.
It is for that low water flow reason the fish ladder on the Clatskanie River was erected. The waterfall there is easy enough in early season conditions for fish to be able to ascend without too much problem. Low water conditions, however, increase the difficulty for the fish exponentially.
To get a better understanding of the falls in this day of YouTube, a video shows both the enjoyment of local daredevils jumping from the top into a fairly deep splash pool beneath and the climb involved in getting out again.
SUCCESS?
The ladder authorized by the Fish Commission of Oregon given an allocation of $19,680. 14 pools, each 10 feet long and 8 feet wide, all designed with a rise of 17 inches between each pool. The project took three months with a 14-foot-deep channel, 8 feet wide and 112 feet long blasted out of the rock alongside the falls. It was thought the ladder would increase streambeds suitable for salmonids by 13.6 miles compared to 3.5 miles before the ladder was built. A stocking program in the upper North Fork became added in addition in an attempt to build up the depleted stock of salmon and steelhead trout.
Has the fish ladder been a successful venture? Well … fish counts to see a hundred or so Coho salmon and another 20-25 steelhead passing through the ladder on an annual basis back in 2010. For 72 years at a cost of today about $375,000 equals about $42 per fish, though that is a bit unfair using 2024 dollars. With 1952 dollars it comes out to $3.55 per fish, so maybe a little better. Then add in the other fish using the ladder like the Pacific lamprey and other trout species and maybe it looks more reasonable.
END OF SALMON LIFE CYCLE ON DISPLAY
To understand fish ladders, I find it instructive to witness the actual spawning migration of the salmon in person. Salmon are big fish, much bigger than many of the streams serving as the final spawning grounds. It is one thing to see the fish pass through the viewing windows in the fish ladders of the large Columbia River dams like Bonneville Dam. It is totally another to see them struggling to make their way up a small stream with half or more of their body exposed out of the waters in which they make their final journey on.
OTHER FISH LADDER EXAMPLES BESIDES WATERFALLS
I have walked upon other waterfalls which have fish ladders blasted alongside, some small and some much larger projects. Here are two examples you can find along the Deschutes River in central Oregon.
ON THE DESCHUTES RIVER
The best-known example probably is at Sherar’s Falls east of the little town of Tygh Valley. This 15-foot drop gives a little idea of what Celilo Falls on the Columbia exhibited before it drowned beneath the waters of the river impounded behind The Dalles Dam. These falls are important today – even more so since Celio is gone – for the local Native American tribes. The land here belongs to the Warm Springs tribes who charge a parking fee for visitors to watch the tribesmen test their skills trying to catch fish pushing their way up through the falls. On the east side of the falls, a fish ladder provides fish with a slightly easier journey, especially if water levels are down a bit in the late summer.
Another example is Steelhead Falls further up the Deschutes west from Terrebonne. From the trailhead, you walk downstream on the east side of the river in a dramatic canyon for about a half mile until you reach the 20-foot drop. On the east side stands a fish ladder blasted out of the basalt. In the summer, go early in the day because temperatures get hot in the afternoons.
granite falls
Consisting of a series of waterfalls, Granite Falls drops through a canyon on the South Fork of the Stillaguamish River. A fish ladder was built in the 1950s with 51 pools – 10 feet by 8 feet – providing salmon with an extra 57 miles of upstream river and creek beds in which to spawn. The fish ladder runs for 560 feet leading to a 300-foot-long tunnel allowing fish to get around the cascade area, much more difficult for the fish in low water conditions. A walkway down to the river goes over the fish ladder.
PEGLEG FALLS
The last example coming to mind I encountered on the Hot Springs Branch of the Collowash River was Pegleg Falls. The Collowash is a big tributary of the Clackamas River. It and the Hot Springs Branch sit deep in the forests of the Cascades. A little further up the road from the waterfall found along this river is the trail leading to Bagby Hot Springs, which can get a little too popular. But the waterfall, Pegleg Falls, roared in silence with just my corgi and I stopped by after a hike in the mountains above.
The waters drop 21 feet across a width of 50 to 60 feet. At least, I thought we were alone. I started to walk closer to the base of the falls to look at the fish ladder dropping down on the river left. We noted a couple involved with communing with nature on a very personal level, so I made do with a view from a distance.
THE BIG FISH LADDERS
When people in this area think of fish ladders, their minds go to the giant affairs rising over the dams along the Columbia River. These ladders are huge in comparison to the little channels rising above Bonnie or Pegleg Falls, but then they were built to attempt to give a chance for the returning masses to continue swimming upriver to their place of birth. With the construction of dams, the odds of sustaining the formerly massive numbers of fish migrating in the river became much worse.
While overfishing certainly played a role in the huge drop in numbers, dams have proven much worse. Most of the Columbia River dams are fairly low in height – low in comparison to the many high dams seen in tributaries where an important secondary goal of the high dams stems from their ability to store large amounts of water for flood control. The large amounts of water impounded also allow hydroelectric plants to keep running even in the late summer and early fall when rainfall is scarce.
SALMON BLOCKS
Fish ladders at Bonneville Dam repeat themselves at upriver dams. The ladders appear on both sides of the river with spillways and powerhouses in between. Dams on the Columbia all have fish ladders, most with two sets and a couple with only one, until you reach the Chief Joseph Dam some 50 miles downstream from Grand Coulee. Grand Coulee is a high dam and fish ladders would have to be very long to allow the fish a chance to rise above the dam.
All salmon runs into the upper Columbia drainage stopped when Grand Coulee opened in 1942. Then Chief Joseph extended the salmon no-go zone in 1948. 40% of the former salmon habitat remains currently blocked by dams today. The Federal Power Act of 1920 dictated dams to have some method for fish to get around the dams – i.e. fish ladders – or to make up for the losses, then hatcheries needed building. For a high dam like Grand Coulee – over 500 feet high – the Corps of Engineers opted to build a hatchery.
BONNEVILLE FISH HATCHERY
At Bonneville you will find fish ladders on either side of the river as well as two hatcheries on the Oregon side – Bonneville Fish Hatchery (State) and the Cascade Fish Hatchery (Federal) on nearby Eagle Creek. Bonneville is Oregon’s largest hatchery. With rearing ponds for coho and chinook salmon – steelhead also raised – and display ponds for visitors to watch rainbow trout and sturgeon – neither raised here – the hatchery is a big tourist attraction. In the sturgeon pond, you can descend and observe the ancient fish slowly swimming around with large Herman the star of the pool.
Visitors see the thousands of juveniles growing in the ponds. They do not see what happens to the fish on their return from life at sea. Water for the ponds is provided from Tanner and Mitchell Creeks. If you happen to hike up to Wahclella Falls, you pass a small dam from which an intake pipe leads downstream to the hatchery.
Fish return to where they began, in this case the hatchery. They come up Tanner Creek and into a series of holding ponds. Last stop is the Spawning Building where the fish meet their end after anesthetization. Females become cut open to gather up their eggs and males squeezed of their semen for fertilization.
Carcasses many times are placed back into the river systems much like what happens with wild salmon. Their bodies provide nutrients for many different species that formerly depended upon those carcasses.
BONNEVILLE FISH LADDERS
Visitors to Bonneville can then go view the fish ladders where underwater viewing windows let them watch the different fish swimming in the ladders whether they are salmon, trout, lamprey or other species. The fish ladders on both side of the river have view windows for observing.
Then there is the whole other side of the problems with dams being how to safely get the little juveniles downstream over the dams without putting them through the power turbines or over the spillways. This is not so much a problem with the little fish ladders on streams like the Hot Springs Branch of the Collowash or the North Fork of Scappoose Creek. The falls, while probably traumatic enough for the little fish, do not have the drop or the power found at hydroelectric dams.
Fish hatcheries remain very controversial; costs incurred, wild versus hatchery fish, as well as a host of other points of debate. It is natural drama to witness the fish swimming upstream whether it is through a viewing window at a dam fish ladder or even more dramatic, the fish making their final journey up some small creek with barely enough water to allow the fish to make their way.
Crown Z Trail – Bonnie Falls (google.com)
2014-State-of-the-Watershed-Scappoose-Bay-Watershed-Council.pdf (scappoosebay-wc.org)