The Bonneville Dam

Another good stop on the way down I-84 is the Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery. The Columbia has quite a few dams, but this one is free and open to the public. We stopped in for a little while to check out the fish ladder and hatchery. I had also never seen a fish ladder before, so this might have qualified as preparatory research.

The Dam was neat. Inside, you could go down to the bottom and watch the fish running up the ladder. It was still very early in the season, so the rush hadn't started yet, but we did see a couple fish swimming up. The fish ladder itself is a pretty neat contraption. Part of it looks exactly like you'd imagine, with steps of flowing water, but above that is a series of labyrinth-like turns that apparently slow the current. As I understand it, the ladder needs to have fast flowing water at the bottom to attract the fish, but higher up the ladder it helps to slow the current. I am sure I will be able to explain it much better before the summer is out.



After checking out the fish ladder, we headed over to the hatchery. Here they were growing huge quantities of salmon and trout. You couldn't get too close to the salmon, which took up most of the hatchery, but you could get quite close to the trout. In fact, there was a machine filled with their daily rations, which you could put a quarter into and get some pellets to feed them.



And in case you were wondering, the Bonneville is not one of the dams I will be working at this summer. We will be at the Dalles and John Day dams, which are a little upriver from the Bonneville.