Palouse Falls and Lower Monumental Dam
Today we kayaked, voyaged in our fleet of Zodiacs, hiked to a falls, and locked through Lower Monumental Dam via Zodiac. At first these activities seem little tied to the history of Lewis and Clark, but there are many common threads that are at first invisible.
We began our morning at the mouth of the Palouse River and Palouse Falls State Park. It is a beautiful place with stark basalt towers that were shaped and carved by ancient (more than 15,000 years ago) floods. When The Corps passed this area in October of 1805 they noted the excellent fishing and large village site. They named it Drewyers River for George Drouillard. Indeed they had noticed a significant area. In 1964 a local landowner discovered some bones that lead to one of the most important archeological digs of the time. In what we now call Marmes Rock Shelter, there were records of human inhabitation for the previous 10,000 years. Also in 1964, a Jefferson peace metal that would have been given out by the Corps was unearthed nearby.
After our exploration of the Palouse River and falls, we continued down the Snake River to Lower Monumental Dam. The name Lower Monumental comes from Monumental Rapid, one of the many that the Corps would have had to navigate in dugout canoes on this section of the river. In order to see things from a different angle, many of us boarded Zodiacs and went through the lock separate from the Sea Bird. From this new perspective the Sea Bird looked gigantic and the lock looked even bigger. Today the locks and dams created slack water on the Columbia and then Snake Rivers all the way to Lewiston, Idaho providing power generation, navigations and flood control. But less than 70 years ago, there were over 100 rapids in that same stretch.
As an interesting note and additional thread to the history of this area, in 1949, the first named proposed for the Lower Monumental Lock and Dam was Lewis Lock and Dam.
Today we kayaked, voyaged in our fleet of Zodiacs, hiked to a falls, and locked through Lower Monumental Dam via Zodiac. At first these activities seem little tied to the history of Lewis and Clark, but there are many common threads that are at first invisible.
We began our morning at the mouth of the Palouse River and Palouse Falls State Park. It is a beautiful place with stark basalt towers that were shaped and carved by ancient (more than 15,000 years ago) floods. When The Corps passed this area in October of 1805 they noted the excellent fishing and large village site. They named it Drewyers River for George Drouillard. Indeed they had noticed a significant area. In 1964 a local landowner discovered some bones that lead to one of the most important archeological digs of the time. In what we now call Marmes Rock Shelter, there were records of human inhabitation for the previous 10,000 years. Also in 1964, a Jefferson peace metal that would have been given out by the Corps was unearthed nearby.
After our exploration of the Palouse River and falls, we continued down the Snake River to Lower Monumental Dam. The name Lower Monumental comes from Monumental Rapid, one of the many that the Corps would have had to navigate in dugout canoes on this section of the river. In order to see things from a different angle, many of us boarded Zodiacs and went through the lock separate from the Sea Bird. From this new perspective the Sea Bird looked gigantic and the lock looked even bigger. Today the locks and dams created slack water on the Columbia and then Snake Rivers all the way to Lewiston, Idaho providing power generation, navigations and flood control. But less than 70 years ago, there were over 100 rapids in that same stretch.
As an interesting note and additional thread to the history of this area, in 1949, the first named proposed for the Lower Monumental Lock and Dam was Lewis Lock and Dam.
