Neptune's Needle

c.1,210 miles long, rising in Columbia L., SE B.C., Canada. It flows first NW in the Rocky Mt. Trench, then hooks sharply about the Selkirk Mts. to flow S through Upper Arrow L. and Lower Arrow L. and receive the Kootenai R. (spelled Kootenay in Canada) before entering the U.S. after a course of 465 miles. It continues S through Wash. and just below the mouth of the Spokane R. is forced by lava beds to make a great bend W before veering S again, running the while entrenched in a narrow valley through the Columbia Plateau. Its chief tributary, the Snake R., joins it just before it turns W again. The Columbia then forms part of the Wash.-Oregon border before entering the Pacific Ocean through a wide estuary W of Portland, Oregon. The Columbia R. has created regal gorges by cutting through the Cascades and the Coast Ranges; it is fed by the Cowlitz and Willamette rivers, which drain the Puget trough between those ranges. Grand Coulee, now a reservoir in the Columbia Basin Project, was a former stream channel of the Columbia R. It was created during the Ice Age when the Columbia’s course was blocked by ice, forcing it to cut a new channel through the Columbia Plateau. When the ice receded the river resumed its former channel. The Columbia R., commanding one of the great drainage basins of N. America (c.259,000 sq miles), was visited by Robert Gray, an Amer. explorer, in 1792 and is named for his vessel, the Columbia. It was first actually entered by a British naval officer, William R. Broughton, later the same year. Long before this time Native Americans were fishing salmon from the river; today fish are still caught here, but heavy settlement along the river and its tributaries, the construction of dams, and human use have reduced the salmon runs. The first whites to arrive overland were the members of the Lewis and Clark expedition and the fur traders (notably David Thompson of the North West Co. and the founders of Astoria). The river was the focus of the Amer. settlement that created Oregon, and the river was itself sometimes called the Oregon R. or the R. of the West. Irrigation was begun early, and some tributaries were used to water cropland and orchards, as in, e.g., the valleys of the Wenatchee and Yakima rivers. After 1932 plans gradually developed to use the Columbia R. to its ultimate possibility and the Columbia basin project was est. Its purpose was to establish flood control, which would alleviate the destruction seen in the Columbia’s greatest flood, that of 1894, and somewhat lesser but damaging floods, such as that of 1948; to improve navigation; to extend irrigation in order to make optimum use of the water of the Columbia and its tributaries; and to produce hydroelectric power to supply the Pacific Northwest. There are 6 Federal and 5 non-Federal dams on the Columbia R. Grand Coulee Dam (the key unit of the Columbia basin project) and Chief Joseph Dam, on the river’s upper course, provide power, flood control, and irrigation. Priest Rapids, Wanapum, Rock Island, Rocky Reaches, and Wells dams are on the middle course; all are among the largest non-Federal hydroelectric facilities in the U.S. Bonneville, The Dalles, John Day, and McNary dams, on the lower course, were designed as power, flood control, and navigation projects; these dams provide a 328-mi/528-km slack-water navigation channel up the Columbia R. from the Pacific Ocean to the Snake R. With these Federal projects and non-Federal dams on the Columbia, hydroelectric plants on the river have a potential generating capacity of about 21 million kw. The development of hydroelectric power has had a significant effect on the economic pattern of the Pacific Northwest.

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Compiler

Peter Richards