Celilo Canal was a

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow un ...

connecting two points of the

Columbia River The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, C ...

between the states of

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

and

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

, U.S. just east of

The Dalles The Dalles is the largest city of Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The population was 16,010 at the 2020 census, and it is the largest city on the Oregon side of the Columbia River between the Portland Metropolitan Area, and Hermiston ...

. In the natural state of the Columbia River, there was an stretch from The Dalles to

Celilo Falls Celilo Falls (Wyam, meaning "echo of falling water" or "sound of water upon the rocks," in several native languages) was a tribal fishing area on the Columbia River, just east of the Cascade Mountains, on what is today the border between the U.S. ...

that was impassable upstream and navigable downstream only at high water and at great risk. Celilo Canal was built in the early part of the 1900s to allow steamboat and river-borne traffic to bypass that stretch.

History and construction

In 1858, a -long wagon road, the

Oregon Portage Railroad The Oregon Portage Railroad was the first railroad in the U.S. state of Oregon. It originally ran for , with an accompanying of telegraph line, and was later extended to a length of . The railroad was located on the south bank of the Cascades ca ...

, had been built around the falls on the south side of the river. This was replaced in 1863 by a -long portage railway owned by the

Oregon Steam Navigation Company The Oregon Steam Navigation Company (O.S.N.) was an American company incorporated in 1860 in Washington with partners J. S. Ruckle, Henry Olmstead, and J. O. Van Bergen. It was incorporated in Washington because of a lack of corporate laws in ...

. A number of studies and false starts were made towards building a canal around the falls, but construction on what was to become known as the Celilo Canal did not begin until 1905, and then took ten years to complete. In 1909, ''Scientific American'' summarized the status of the work and its objectives: ''Scientific American'' was also optimistic about the prospective economic value of the canal: The federal government spent 5 million dollars on its construction. For an inaugural cruise, the steamer ''Undine'' left Portland April 29 and arrived in Lewiston, May 3, 1915.

Effect on navigation

Boosters of the Celilo Canal organized the Open River Navigation Company, and put the ''Charles R. Spencer'' and ''J.N. Teal'' on the run from Portland to The Dalles, ''Twin Cities'' and ''Inland Empire'' on the route up the Snake River, and ''Relief'' on the run from Celilo to Pasco, Washington. ''Mountain Gem'' supported ''Relief'' above Celilo Once the canal was complete, navigation was open on the Columbia from the mouth of the river all the way to

Priest Rapids Priest Rapids was a narrow, fast-flowing stretch of the Columbia River, located in the central region of the U.S. state of Washington. It was flooded by the construction of the Priest Rapids Dam in the 1950s. Before the dam's construction, the riv ...

, and, up the Snake River, to the mouth of the

Grande Ronde River The Grande Ronde River ( or, less commonly, ) is a tributary of the Snake River, long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed May 3, 2011 in northeastern Oregon and southeastern ...

near Rogersburg. However, completion of the canal came too late to fend off competition from railroads had taken away most of the steamboat's business. Riverine transportation above Celilo never reached the hopes of the proponents of the canal. Only in the late 1930s did the development of wheat barge traffic, eventually driven by diesel towboats, become an important transport method on the Columbia River.Timmen, at 39-47

Current state

The canal and all related works were flooded following the completion of

The Dalles Dam The Dalles Dam is a concrete-gravity run-of-the-river dam spanning the Columbia River, two miles (3 km) east of the city of The Dalles, Oregon, United States. It joins Wasco County, Oregon with Klickitat County, Washington, 300 miles (309&nbs ...

in 1957.

References

External links

Photographs

''Albany'' on the Big Eddy above The DallesCorps of Engineers photos of rapids and falls on the Columbia River between The Dalles and CeliloCorps of Engineers map showing location of proposed Celilo Canal and locksCelilo Canal and lock, 1915Sternwheeler ''Umatilla'' in Celilo CanalFirst steamboats to pass through Celilo canal, ''Inland Empire'' and ''J.M. Teal''
{{Steamboats Pacific Northwest, state = collapsed History of transportation in Oregon Columbia River 1915 establishments in Oregon Canals in Washington (state)