Amazing to see the Columbia before The Dalles Dam was built, before the Astoria-Megler Bridge was built, before the breakwaters at the Columbia Bar were built. If you've lived here all your life since these structures were put in place you can't imagine what it was like before they existed - it's as if they were always there. As a collective public-works project, the Columbia River dams and estuary are an engineering marvel.
Sorry Dan. This is a government propaganda film like all the others produced in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. What about the plentiful salmon runs that were obliterated by the Grand Coulee and other dams? Native Americans lost their traditional cultural and fishing sites, and even European settlers had to relocate their communities (e.g., Boardman, Arlington). I guess that's just the cost of doing business - that is, making $$.
@@desert.mantisthere have been some serious and regrettable mistakes concerning the salmon and Native American stuff...but European settlers? 😂 This video is from 1947 not 1820.
The Columbia Gorge was there long before most of human kind was there. So many millions of years. The Astoria bridge is infinitely younger structure before the Gorge Ever formed. Please look into the fascinating geology and geography of this fascinating area. It truly is amazing.
I also enjoy watching what was, and knowing how MAN DESTROYS ..GODS BEAUTIFUL EARTH. I AM OLD NOW. I HAVE LIVED NEAR THE RIVER MY WHOLE LIFE. I CRY SOMETIMES, REMBERING, WHEN ..my brother and I went fishing, swimming and you could still, DRINK THE WATER.! NOW I TRY TO tell MY children, grandchildren and great grandchildren about how LIFE WAS worth Living. Maybe I I AM just getting tried. GOD BLESS YOU. SHALOM P.S., there were a few BAD things that happened as well . Like the terrible discrimination against the INDIANS. That truly was SAD. GOD BLESS IN Jesus.
Chief Joseph, Wanapum, Rock island, John Day, The Dalles dam Mcnary, Rocky reach, Priest Rapids, Are all the dams that have been built since. You can only see whitewater and fast water at the dam spillway nowadays.
Great video, the Columbia Gorge itself is always an awesome sight on a clear day, you can see for many miles downstream at the right vantage point and hundreds of feet down. I was just crossing on the 82 and saw a barge going under the bridge, always something to feast your eyes on!
The geological story of the river and its basin is nothing short of spellbinding. The entire PNW in fact. I can't begin to list them all but the scale of geomorphology in this area is almost impossible to wrap your head around.
The difference between the Columbia and the Fraser river is no dams were put on the Fraser do the Sturgeon and Salmon species in the Fraser are much more stable
The river starts at Columbia Lake by Fairmont Hot Springs in British Columbia, its such a humble little river at its origin. Initially it flows north prior to taking its southerly course. The narrator sounds like it was probably Mike Wallace, who was on 60 Minutes for so long
6:18 the building to the top right on the rock face is the Vista House at Crown Point. The footage was taken at Woman’s Forum. Down below at the river is Rooster Rock State Park.
It was an interesting shot to view the mouth of the Columbia and Pacific Ocean at Astoria BEFORE the Astoria-Megler Bridge was built. In 2024, it’s hard to imagine how the mouth of the Columbia River at Astoria ever even existed for so long, for the tens of millions of years, without the bridge.
Fondly recall flying into Portland and driving up the Columbia River gorge to watch USC play Washington State on a Friday night and then driving back through Portland Saturday to catch an Oregon State game that evening. PAC12 doubleheader of sorts
restricted us from fishing... and allowed commercial fishermen permits to fish it out. now we pay for fish hatchery and stock nature artificially.. or there would be nothing.
Odd that there is no mention of the first dam built on the Columbia River which is still working hard to this day. One of the tug boat in this film is on display at the Port of Morrow in Boardman OR.
These two dams were major reasons we were able to win WW11. The electricity they produced made it possible for US to make military planes and vehicles much faster than other countries.
Once upon a time, yes... we actually had salmon! First Americans still fished at the now submerged Celilo Falls; and - there were real trees! ... not the pecker poles we see today, that went downriver to be milled in the Pacific NW, and were not exported to the highest bidder by greedy corporations. And oh how marvelous those fish ladders have worked! The Pacific NW could never run out of salmon, or trees, or water!
Giant salmon- large enough to feed 100 people- accidentally discovered in in Tasman district ua-cam.com/video/DXZAyKP6A7A/v-deo.html Meanwhile the klamath run dies at near 100% today ua-cam.com/video/WN_H6B5OlC8/v-deo.html
I doubt he would understand it either, makes it sound like there is an N in the word but there isn't. The canal shown at 3:09 is under the water of the Dalles dam and also the Indian fishing spots. Celilo Falls and Celilo Canal underwater in 1957 where this film was made ten years before. I'm guessing he was reading it from a paper gone thru a filthy typewriter of those days and it's pronounced sea lie low. Say lil oh?
If you look in the WA fishing regs you'll see that none of the native fish on the Columbia are safe to eat. You'd probably be fine if they detoxed in the Pacific.
@@M70ACARRY They are actually pretty safe to eat if the fish itself doesn't show signs of sickness. We've caught and eaten many over decades and we've had no health problems. (we always cook them but I don't think it would change the problem)
Remove the lower 4 Snake river dams that keep endangered salmon from reaching prime habitat in the Snake watershed. The dams are expensive and antiquated. We have new ways of transportation and energy manufacturing. Save the salmon!
@@davefransen5096 THis is Eleanor Mattice. Yes, rivers flood ... that's how water is cleaned is soaking down through the soil in a floodplain. We should be ready for floods anyway. The flooding will affect many areas all over the world. Look at Europe at this time!
It’s a trade off, absolutely. But I doubt most human’s in the area would be willing to forgo electricity, so what are the choices? Coal powered generation is, IMO, far worse, not just from the CO2 created by burning, but all the consequences from mining. Nuclear? The prospect of a single disaster, even once in a thousand years, one which which would result in thousands of square miles of area rendered unfit for habitation for millennia, a far as I can see makes it, the worst possible choice. So now what? Solar and wind (wind of course has proven to pose some danger to birdlife) both combined can't, given the current state of technology, provide but a small fraction of what we now use. Perhaps fifty or a hundred years into the future, assuming people are still around, we’ll have found the perfect solution, I’m guessing geothermal will figure into it; but for now, can you suggest a preferable alternative to hydroelectric generation?
They mean critical rivers not the Columbia river of course, the dams provide all of the electricity and very clean and cheap also massive floods are prevented by the dams that would make Portland area under water so they are not going anywhere I can promises you that.
Dams are the worst invention of human kind we are capable of so amazing things but destroying our environment also tell us how lazy we can be to pursuit “efficiency “
Lol! There are a couple of problems with this. First, these fish are clearly global warming deniers and should be cancelled. Also, 6:38 they meant to say "a few miles up the Willamette is the city of Portland... a major sh!thole of the Pacific Coast". There, I fixed it for ya!
@@bradleysmall2230 Well, sort of. Biden won the electoral votes over Trump 306 to 232. And he won the popular vote 81 million over Trump's 74 million. What's your point?
Their current contract allows them to fish year round with gill nets. I've seen those nets stay in the water for 4 days, which is about 3 days too many. Over half of the fish got thrown back in because they were dead and rotting from sitting in the net too long.
The once booming sturgeon population is also nearly non existent here because of the "contract" the natives have regarding fishing. It's time to hold the natives to the same standards as their white neighbor.
@@jasonwcoleman250 can't do it cause they are sovereign nations and set their own rules, it's called payback for genocide big losses of land from broken treaties, including the Black Hills of South Dakota
Amazing to see the Columbia before The Dalles Dam was built, before the Astoria-Megler Bridge was built, before the breakwaters at the Columbia Bar were built. If you've lived here all your life since these structures were put in place you can't imagine what it was like before they existed - it's as if they were always there. As a collective public-works project, the Columbia River dams and estuary are an engineering marvel.
An era of factual documentary and journalism with little to no agenda aside from educating and earning a paycheck.
Sorry Dan. This is a government propaganda film like all the others produced in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s.
What about the plentiful salmon runs that were obliterated by the Grand Coulee and other dams? Native Americans lost their traditional cultural and fishing sites, and even European settlers had to relocate their communities (e.g., Boardman, Arlington). I guess that's just the cost of doing business - that is, making $$.
@@desert.mantis just another whining liberal
@@daffyduck9901 Dude that's a conservative victim if I ever heard one. Who the fuck is whining about the media bias all the time? Fuck you Troll.
@@daffyduck9901 You wish closet case.
@@desert.mantisthere have been some serious and regrettable mistakes concerning the salmon and Native American stuff...but European settlers? 😂 This video is from 1947 not 1820.
This was made before the Astoria bridge was built . Crazy to think of a time before then
The Columbia Gorge was there long before most of human kind was there. So many millions of years. The Astoria bridge is infinitely younger structure before the Gorge Ever formed. Please look into the fascinating geology and geography of this fascinating area. It truly is amazing.
I love these old documentaries.
I also enjoy watching what was, and knowing how MAN DESTROYS ..GODS BEAUTIFUL EARTH. I AM OLD NOW. I HAVE LIVED NEAR THE RIVER MY WHOLE LIFE. I CRY SOMETIMES, REMBERING, WHEN ..my brother and I went fishing, swimming and you could still, DRINK THE WATER.! NOW I TRY TO tell MY children, grandchildren and great grandchildren about how LIFE WAS worth Living. Maybe I I AM just getting tried. GOD BLESS YOU. SHALOM P.S., there were a few BAD things that happened as well . Like the terrible discrimination against the INDIANS. That truly was SAD. GOD BLESS IN Jesus.
If I was in school and they made me watch this I would hate it but I’m high as fuck in my bedroom and it’s awesome
This is a great video. I was born in Vancouver, WA in 1947. My uncles worked at the fish canneries at Ellsworth on the Columbia River.
I’ve worked on many rivers across the country. The Columbia was the most beautiful.
Chief Joseph, Wanapum, Rock island, John Day, The Dalles dam Mcnary, Rocky reach, Priest Rapids, Are all the dams that have been built since. You can only see whitewater and fast water at the dam spillway nowadays.
Opening in 1933, Rock Island was the first dam to span the Columbia River.
I know it's sad.
Love how they only filmed on sunny, calm days. Northwesterners know what I'm talking about.
Yeah its always cloudy up here
And windy
Northeast over here chillin in the sunny days as usual lol
And we still make wheaf
In Wenatchee it’s sunny 300+ days a year on average
The Columbia is massive and powerful…
Visited Bonneville Dam and Portland in the 90’s, would love to visit again from the UK.
Great video, the Columbia Gorge itself is always an awesome sight on a clear day, you can see for many miles downstream at the right vantage point and hundreds of feet down. I was just crossing on the 82 and saw a barge going under the bridge, always something to feast your eyes on!
The geological story of the river and its basin is nothing short of spellbinding. The entire PNW in fact. I can't begin to list them all but the scale of geomorphology in this area is almost impossible to wrap your head around.
i love living next to the mighty columbia
The difference between the Columbia and the Fraser river is no dams were put on the Fraser do the Sturgeon and Salmon species in the Fraser are much more stable
The river starts at Columbia Lake by Fairmont Hot Springs in British Columbia, its such a humble little river at its origin. Initially it flows north prior to taking its southerly course. The narrator sounds like it was probably Mike Wallace, who was on 60 Minutes for so long
a friend of mine paddled the entire river from Fairmont to the ocean. It took months. Here's a link www.clairedibble.com/watershed
6:18 the building to the top right on the rock face is the Vista House at Crown Point. The footage was taken at Woman’s Forum. Down below at the river is Rooster Rock State Park.
It was an interesting shot to view the mouth of the Columbia and Pacific Ocean at Astoria BEFORE the Astoria-Megler Bridge was built. In 2024, it’s hard to imagine how the mouth of the Columbia River at Astoria ever even existed for so long, for the tens of millions of years, without the bridge.
Fondly recall flying into Portland and driving up the Columbia River gorge to watch USC play Washington State on a Friday night and then driving back through Portland Saturday to catch an Oregon State game that evening. PAC12 doubleheader of sorts
As a local tour guide with PEAK Tours. It’s a beautiful glimpse into the area and the era of film’s production. Explore
The big curve was caused by lava flow.
Is it part of the Columbia basalt plateau?
@@jjkaiser1954 yes. The lava is up to 5 miles deep in some areas.
Roll on, Columbia🌊🌊🌊
Roll on Columbia🤙🏼
The days before the salmon population dropped
Yeah, these days it’s more like “the days before the salmon where contaminated by nuclear radiation and waste”
restricted us from fishing... and allowed commercial fishermen permits to fish it out.
now we pay for fish hatchery and stock nature artificially.. or there would be nothing.
@@uhadme really is a tragedy...
Grand Coulee destroyed millions of salmon
Before the dams, millions of salmon migrated up the river to spawn
The guy counting fish - now he has a good job!
Nothing about the Hanford nuclear processing plants.....
What about em? It was probably still secret when this came out. I grew up around that area in the 90's and the secrets were still surfacing even then.
secret
Hello from Robson BC🇨🇦right on the Columbia river , just below THE HI ARROW DAM
Thank you for the video.
I remember seeing 8ft salmon going up the ladders at The Dalles dam in the 70s.My friend had his arm broke trying to tag a three ft salmon.
Pretty sure your 8 footer was sturgeon, not salmon.
Odd that there is no mention of the first dam built on the Columbia River which is still working hard to this day. One of the tug boat in this film is on display at the Port of Morrow in Boardman OR.
These two dams were major reasons we were able to win WW11. The electricity they produced made it possible for US to make military planes and vehicles much faster than other countries.
Once upon a time, yes... we actually had salmon! First Americans still fished at the now submerged Celilo Falls; and - there were real trees! ... not the pecker poles we see today, that went downriver to be milled in the Pacific NW, and were not exported to the highest bidder by greedy corporations. And oh how marvelous those fish ladders have worked! The Pacific NW could never run out of salmon, or trees, or water!
yep old growth forest clearing in British Columbia Canada is making southern forest Caribou disappear
I remember as a kid in the late '50s~early '60s watching log rafts passing down the Willamette through Portland
Mike Wallace narrating.
Very interesting!
My grandfather help build the Bonneville dam 1938.
Grand coulie killed the largest salmon in the world. June hogs. 100+ lb chinook salmon. Entire gravel beds of spawning habitat.
Now the proof is in, chemicals in car tires is killing the salmon, no one doing anything about it.
Giant salmon- large enough to feed 100 people- accidentally discovered in in Tasman district
ua-cam.com/video/DXZAyKP6A7A/v-deo.html
Meanwhile the klamath run dies at near 100% today
ua-cam.com/video/WN_H6B5OlC8/v-deo.html
Lee Barnes yeah those salmon aren’t that big. Some bullshit
@@MatanuskaHIGH Fool. You've never caught a salmon, or even gotten laid. Yet you know so much.
I’m going dipnetting kenai river next week. Google it.
And this was the beginning of the end of the beautiful and great Columbia River.
Who narrated this film? , he sounds very familiar.
Ah yes, 1947 before Portland became the dumpster fire that it is today!
Meanwhile ur house is an RV
Sounds like Mike Wallace was the narrator
Mike Wallace for sure
Fucked it all up.
You’re welcome for the recreation, food and lowest kWh electricity in the country.
1 year later the Vanport flood.
Whenever the narrator says Portland I think of riots
Funny how much the media controls what you see. I live in Portland. What riots?! 😂😂😂
@@TooDeepItHurts Oh, I guess it’s a small portion of Portland.
All I can think of no fish to feed the people due to the dam dams
@@susanfaber2595 For me its this and the riots but ye sad times
@@susanfaber2595 damn dams?
3:47 what is the name of these falls? i cant make out what hes saying. id like to read about it.
I doubt he would understand it either, makes it sound like there is an N in the word but there isn't. The canal shown at 3:09 is under the water of the Dalles dam and also the Indian fishing spots. Celilo Falls and Celilo Canal underwater in 1957 where this film was made ten years before. I'm guessing he was reading it from a paper gone thru a filthy typewriter of those days and it's pronounced sea lie low. Say lil oh?
Celilo Falls
@@leebarnes655 , thank you.... no wonder i couldnt locate it.
At least he pronounced Willamette right.
I grew up fishing this area and never could find a drop-off on the depth finder. I'm pretty certain that celilo is completely silted in at this point.
it was really built to powr hanford
ไม้ แร่ หิน ได้เท่านั้น
Is the salmon safe to eat nowadays?
If you look in the WA fishing regs you'll see that none of the native fish on the Columbia are safe to eat. You'd probably be fine if they detoxed in the Pacific.
@@jasonwcoleman250 sad! I figured as much.
@@M70ACARRY They are actually pretty safe to eat if the fish itself doesn't show signs of sickness. We've caught and eaten many over decades and we've had no health problems. (we always cook them but I don't think it would change the problem)
I wouldn't count on that
👍👍🤘🤘
What about the salmon
Remove the lower 4 Snake river dams that keep endangered salmon from reaching prime habitat in the Snake watershed. The dams are expensive and antiquated. We have new ways of transportation and energy manufacturing. Save the salmon!
AGREED! totally
Funny how you talk jiberish about taking out dams with fish ladders but don't say anything about taking out the ones without fish ladders
Every town along the river would flood out. The whole town of The Dalles would flood before the Dam was put in.
@@davefransen5096 THis is Eleanor Mattice. Yes, rivers flood ... that's how water is cleaned is soaking down through the soil in a floodplain. We should be ready for floods anyway. The flooding will affect many areas all over the world. Look at Europe at this time!
A once great river mostly destroyed
Nah
It’s a trade off, absolutely. But I doubt most human’s in the area would be willing to forgo electricity, so what are the choices? Coal powered generation is, IMO, far worse, not just from the CO2 created by burning, but all the consequences from mining. Nuclear? The prospect of a single disaster, even once in a thousand years, one which which would result in thousands of square miles of area rendered unfit for habitation for millennia, a far as I can see makes it, the worst possible choice. So now what? Solar and wind (wind of course has proven to pose some danger to birdlife) both combined can't, given the current state of technology, provide but a small fraction of what we now use.
Perhaps fifty or a hundred years into the future, assuming people are still around, we’ll have found the perfect solution, I’m guessing geothermal will figure into it; but for now, can you suggest a preferable alternative to hydroelectric generation?
@@juliecramer7768 it is destroyed there used to be 100 pound + chinook salmon. Because of the dams that gene pool is long gone.
@@carey_metv sad :(
@@carey_metv I'm sure the indians released them all when netting year-a-round!
the greatest--Swimbait1
What if it was the “grand culo” dam?
"Damn!"
the Grand Culo Daayyyuummmm
We got lucky
Why are there dislikes?
Because some people still understand the good out weighs the bad
NORTHWEST corner of Washington.
What's the point in this comment? Northwest corner of Washington would be up by Canada
NorthEAST
NW corner of Oregon, he meant.
With 60 damn, and the power Pacific Ocean, Should there be an earthquake ever occur. Power flush. There will be nothing to stand its way.
สำรวจเป็น100รอบ
What u saying to me
When Nesara is implemented here in the USA, all damns on all rivers will be removed.
They mean critical rivers not the Columbia river of course, the dams provide all of the electricity and very clean and cheap also massive floods are prevented by the dams that would make Portland area under water so they are not going anywhere I can promises you that.
ป่าหวายโอนให้ใคร
Love how they only filmed starting in the US, if I'm Canada I'm building a massive dam.
"it begins in Canada, but who cares about that northern wasteland? Lets take a look starting in the centre of the universe, the USA"
Ohh what a PRIVILEGE for the Indians to be allowed to fish in THEIR OWN RIVER! #AmericasRacist
I'm certain the Chinese will be as solicitous!
LMAO that's what you took from the video?? Somebody hates Whyte people a little too much
Own river? 😂😂😂 Yes, they will ask for permission.
The world was doing just fine without the damn Dam. 😅
1947 in color?
Yes. Gone With the Wind was made in the thirties and it was in color!
ไฟฟ้าไม่มีใช้ได้ไง
Was this filmed in the 60's?
1947
ขายตาทองเพชรก็จบแล้วเขานั้น
เงินที่ได้มาก็โดนชิฟ
A wonder and tragedy of human engineering. Not a river, today, a chain of artificial lakes.
Then you haven't been on it!
@@diane8937 Huh?
ป่าเปล่าๆทำไมให้ทำไร
Dams are the worst invention of human kind we are capable of so amazing things but destroying our environment also tell us how lazy we can be to pursuit “efficiency “
Lol! There are a couple of problems with this. First, these fish are clearly global warming deniers and should be cancelled. Also, 6:38 they meant to say "a few miles up the Willamette is the city of Portland... a major sh!thole of the Pacific Coast". There, I fixed it for ya!
ไม่ได้สนใจเครื่องจักร
สตรอง
It’s now a useful river. No longer great.
Still very great!
@@diane8937
Not if you like living rivers
But sadly it Destroyed the salmon run too .
Red Fish Lake no longer has any red fish. Humans suck.
Well you're obviously a super human God who knows everything....you FIX IT hot-shot.
idc what human's reap from these dammed dams! just BRING OUR SALMON BACK!!! Onkwehonwe and salmon...go together. Nyaweh
damned dams
@@dunruden9720 LoL
Dammit all!
then biden was selected as prez
Is there some way for you to be more pathetic? I don't think so.
@@soaringvulture but he was by the electoral collage
@@bradleysmall2230 What's your problem, MAGAT? Spit it out.
@@soaringvulture my memory is biden selected by electors over trump by around 300 elector votes uinless i am in a diff reality..
@@bradleysmall2230 Well, sort of. Biden won the electoral votes over Trump 306 to 232. And he won the popular vote 81 million over Trump's 74 million. What's your point?
Love how the Native Americans have to have a contract with the “government” to be able to fish. 🙄
To fish "year round" they needed a contract. Even in the 60's white man couldn't fish them when they were spawning.
Their current contract allows them to fish year round with gill nets. I've seen those nets stay in the water for 4 days, which is about 3 days too many. Over half of the fish got thrown back in because they were dead and rotting from sitting in the net too long.
The once booming sturgeon population is also nearly non existent here because of the "contract" the natives have regarding fishing. It's time to hold the natives to the same standards as their white neighbor.
They shouldn't be getting any special treatment anyway.
@@jasonwcoleman250 can't do it cause they are sovereign nations and set their own rules, it's called payback for genocide big losses of land from broken treaties, including the Black Hills of South Dakota