Bonneville Lock & Dam

The stunning beauty of the Columbia River took me into another world. To hike in the Mt. Hood region of Oregon, and to see Triple Falls was inspiring and relaxing at the same time.

At the same place, some 76 years ago, in 1938 the Bonneville Lock & Dam was built.

I walked into this dam on the Washington shore wanting to see jumping salmon. So, I was standing there, looking down on the water and waiting to see fish jump. Well, they didn't jump, at least not here.

Stephanie Lange and Ryan Braaten

But something better happened. Park ranger Ryan Braaten came by and asked if I wanted to see the salmon. Yes! He took me below into a big room which looked like an aquarium. The dam consists of a fish observatory including fish counting which is constructed in this manner that the visitor can see the traveling fish under water. And there were so many of them! Ryan explained everything about salmon, hatchery, wild ones, chinooks, and so on. In a little dark corner, shielded from the visitor room, sits one person counting every fish. The counting of the fish goes into how much salmon is there, how much wild ones are there, and how much is allowed to be caught. It is not allowed to catch real wild salmon. When a restaurants menu says "wild salmon" it is probably from a hatchery.


What was even more exciting than to see the salmons was the fact that Ryan gave a short tour around the dam itself. The Bonneville Dam is one of 14 dams of the Columbia River. It was built to improve the river navigation and to generate hydropower for the Pacific Northwest and parts of California. To react to the rising need for energy, a second powerhouse was built in 1981. Ryan showed the turbine cavern with 8 hugh power generators. This cavern was so impressively big, the workers looked like little ants next to the mammoth machinery. Thanks to Ryan, we walked onto a generator, looked into it from above to see the copper coils and the rotating Kaplan turbine. To see these energy generator in reality is impressive and I suggest to everyone to see it at least once to get an idea what kind of effort has to be taken to produce all the electric energy we use in our everyday life.

Thanks to Ryan Braaten, who loves to bring specific objectives and themes closer to visitors and audiences and explains it in a way everybody understands - from accountant to geotechnical Engineer. No wonder he received the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' highest agency national award for interpretation in 2013 - Hiram M. Chittenden Award for Excellence in Interpretation.