First impressions as we fly in our Petroleum Airlines Embraer en route to Abu Simbel airport from Aswan. The Nile was impounded first in 1902 by the British, whose history in the Middle East have volumes to lead one to dismay. Displacements to locals at that time were one thing but with the development of the High Dam in 1961, they became totally another thing. Nubia was gone, drowned beneath the Lakes of Lake Nasser. Egypt finally gained its revenge for the 25th Dynasty.
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Waterpower attracted the attention of the earliest Europeans to the site of Willamette Falls. John McLoughlin laid a claim to land at base of the Falls as early as 1829. Listed as the second largest waterfall in North America based on water volume, in the Northwest, the falls only outdone by those at Celilo and Kettle on the Columbia. Both of those waterfalls now drowned by reservoirs backed up behind dams – The Dalles Dam and Grand Coulee Dam. Willamette Falls is also the site of the first hydroelectric plant built in the Northwest – 1888. From here, transmission lines stretched north to Portland fourteen miles to the north. These lines represented the first transmission of electricity in the United States. At the time, about the only thing using the generated power consisted of streetlights in the city, but trolley systems quickly came into use.
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