Cascade Locks, Indians, salmon, Dismal Nitch

Sat 19 June 2010
Cascade Locks is a canal lock build to help barges around some rapids on the Columbia River. The newer dams on the river have made the lock obsolete but it is fun to see the way they must have worked by closing a gate to build up a backlog of water flowing downstream into the lock. But the most interesting part was that saw the modern Indians have built platforms down on the side of the walls of the old lock about ten feet above the water. They use these platforms to stand on and we saw them wearing modern rain gear while they catch salmon in nets on a long handled loop. They catch them really fast. When they catch them they pull the net up on the platform and empty the flopping fish on the platform. So they are standing among half a dozen flopping fish as they put the net back down in the water to catch more fish. They load this fish into coolers and sell them to tourists as "fresh." Image source: http://digitum.washingtonhistory.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/columbia&CISOPTR=71&CISOBOX=1&REC=1

We also saw Dismal Nitch on the north shore of the Columbia River where the Lewis and Clark's Corp of Discovery was caught by a winter storm on the Columbia for six days and had to hole up hoping for a change of weather. It was the only time in their journals when they used the word dangerous. When the weather broke they went a few miles further and found Station Camp where they could see the Pacific Ocean and realized their mission had been completed. The site was so important they made a complete map of it and spent a lot of time determining the exact latitude and longitude of it. They knew they were on the Columbia River because as they got closer to the ocean they met many tribes with trade goods brought in by ships. They had a map showing the location of the Columbia and they provided their own map of the area between the lower Missouri and the Columbia rivers.