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The Columbia River (French: fleuve Columbia) is a river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. It stretches from the Canadian province of British Columbia, through the U.S. state of Washington, and forms much of the border between Washington and Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. It is the largest river by volume flowing into the Pacific from the Western Hemisphere, and is the fourth-largest by volume in North America behind the Mississippi, St. Lawrence, and Mackenzie Rivers. (In rare years, the river’s flow may actually exceed that of the Mississippi.)
The Columbia's average annual flow is about 265,000 ft³/s (7,500 m³/s). The highest recorded flow was 1,240,000 ft³/s (35,113 m³/s), on June 6, 1894. From its headwaters to the Pacific Ocean it flows 1,243 miles (2,000 km), and drains 258,000 square miles (668,217 km²), of which about 15% is in Canada.
The Columbia is the largest hydroelectric power producing river in North America, with 14 hydroelectric dams in the United States and Canada.
The river was named after Captain Robert Gray’s ship Columbia Rediviva, the first ship from the United States or a European country documented to have traveled up the river.[1]
Because of its large water volume and relatively steep grade, the river has the nickname “the Mighty Columbia.”
Columbia Lake (elevation about 808 metres or 2,650 ft) forms the Columbia’s headwaters in the Canadian Rockies of southern British Columbia. The river flows to the northwest before turning south, passing through Eastern Washington, and then turning west, forming much of the border between Washington and Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean between Ilwaco, Washington and Astoria, Oregon, forming the Columbia Bar.
For its first 200 miles (320 km) the Columbia flows northwest, through Windermere Lake and the town of Invermere, then northwest to Golden and into Kinbasket Lake. The river then turns sharply south (at the “Big Bend”), passing through Revelstoke Lake and the Arrow Lakes to the BC–Washington border.
The Clark Fork River, which begins near Butte, Montana, flows through western Montana before entering Pend Oreille Lake. Water draining from the lake forms the Pend Oreille River, which flows across the Idaho panhandle to Washington’s northeastern corner where it meets the northern Canadian fork.
The river then runs south-southwest through the Columbia Plateau, changing to a southeasterly direction near the confluence of the Wenatchee River in central Washington. The river continues southeast, past The Gorge Amphitheatre (a prominent concert venue in the Northwest), and then past the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, just before it reaches the confluence with the Snake River in the Tri-Cities, Washington. This part of the river is called the Hanford Reach and is the only part of the river in the United States that is free-flowing, unimpeded by dams and not a tidal estuary. The Columbia then makes a sharp bend to the west. The river forms the border between Washington and Oregon for the final 300 miles (480 km) of its journey.
The river passes through the Cascade Mountains between The Dalles, Oregon and Portland, Columbia River Gorge; it is the only river that cuts across the Cascades. The gorge is known for its strong steady winds, its scenic beauty, and as an important transportation link.
The river continues west with one small north-northwesterly-directed stretch near Portland, Vancouver, Washington, and the river's confluence with the Willamette River. On this sharp bend the river’s flow slows considerably, and it drops the sediment that might otherwise form a river delta. The river empties into the Pacific Ocean near Astoria, Oregon; the Columbia River Bar is widely considered one of the most difficult to navigate.
The Columbia River and its drainage basin has experienced some of the world’s greatest known floods. Towards the end of the last ice age, the rupturing of ice dams at Glacial Lake Missoula resulted in discharge rates ten times the combined flow of all the rivers of the world.[2] Water levels resulting from the Missoula Floods have been estimated to be 1,250 feet (381 m) at the Wallula Gap, 830 feet (253 m) at Bonneville Dam, and 400 feet (122 m) over current day Portland, Oregon.[3] In addition to their temporary inundation of the lower Columbia basin, these floods are responsible for many geological features still visible on the Columbia Plateau.
In 1775, Bruno de Heceta became the first European to sight the mouth of the Columbia River, naming it either Bahía de la Asunción, or the San Rogue River. On May 11, 1792, Captain Robert Gray managed to sail into the Columbia River, becoming the first White to enter it. Gray had traveled to the Pacific Northwest to trade for fur in a privately owned vessel named Columbia Rediviva; he named the river after the ship. Gray spent nine days trading near the mouth of the Columbia, then left without having gone beyond 13 miles upstream. George Vancouver, commander of the British naval expedition that was exploring the region at the same time, soon learned that Gray claimed to have found a navigable river, and went to investigate for himself. In October 1792, Vancouver sent Lieutenant William Robert Broughton, his second-in-command, up the river. Broughton sailed up for some miles, then continued in small boats. He got as far as the Columbia River Gorge, about 100 miles upstream, sighting and naming Mount Hood. He also formally claimed the river, its watershed, and the nearby coast for Britain. Gray's discovery of the Columbia was used by the United States to support their claim to the Oregon Country, which was also claimed by Russia, Great Britain, Spain, and other nations.[4]
French explorers called the Columbia River "the river of storms", ouragan, which is a possible origin of the name "Oregon". Other possibilities have been suggested based on words from French and Spanish (since the region was explored by their nationals), but an official origin of the name is not known. George R. Stewart argued in a 1944 article in American Speech that the name "Oregon" came from an engraver's error in a French map published in the early 1700s, on which the Ouisiconsink (Wisconsin River) was spelled "Ouaricon-sint", broken on two lines with the -sint below, so that there appeared to be a river flowing to the west named "Ouaricon". This theory was endorsed in Oregon Geographic Names as "the most plausible explanation".
Lewis and Clark’s overland expedition explored the vast, unmapped lands west of the Missouri River. On the last stretch of their expedition in 1805 they traveled down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean.
David Thompson of the North West Company spent the winter of 1807–08 at Kootenae House near the source of the Columbia at present day Invermere, British Columbia. In 1811 he traveled down the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first European-American to travel the entire length of the river.
In 1825, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company, Dr. John McLoughlin established Fort Vancouver (currently Vancouver, Washington) on the banks of the Columbia as a fur trading headquarters in the region. The fort was by far the largest European settlement in the northwest of the time. Every year ships would come from London (via the Pacific) to drop off supplies and trade goods in exchange for the furs. For many settlers the fort became the last stop on the Oregon Trail to buy supplies and land before starting their homestead. Because of its access to the Columbia river, Fort Vancouver’s influence reached from Alaska to California and from the Rocky Mountains to the Hawaiian Islands.
By the turn of the 20th century, the difficulty of navigating the Columbia was seen as an impediment to the economic development of the Inland Empire region east of the Cascades.[5] The dredging and dam building that followed would permanently alter the river, disrupting its natural flow but also providing electricity, irrigation, navigability, and other benefits to the region.
On February 13, 1980, $5,800 (in bundles of $20 bills) was found by a family on a picnic five miles northwest of Vancouver, Washington on the banks of the Columbia River. The money is believed by the FBI to be part of the 1971 Hijacker, D. B. Cooper’s ransom money.
On July 1, 2003, Christopher Swain of Portland, Oregon became the first person to swim the Columbia River's entire length.
The river's extreme elevation drop over a relatively short distance (2,700 feet in 1,232 miles (822 m in 1,982 km)) gives it tremendous potential for hydroelectricity generation. It was estimated in the 1960s – 70s that the Columbia represented 1/5 of the total hydroelectric capacity on Earth (although these estimates may no longer be accurate.) The Columbia drops , as compared with the Mississippi which drops less than .
Today, the mainstream of the Columbia River has 14 dams (three in Canada, 11 in the United States.) Four mainstem dams and four lower Snake River dams have locks to allow ship and barge passage. Numerous Columbia River tributaries have dams for hydroelectric and/or irrigation purposes. While hydroelectricity accounts for only 6.5% of energy in the United States, the Columbia and its tributaries provide approximately 60% of the hydroelectric power on the west coast.[6] The largest of the 150 hydroelectric projects, the Grand Coulee Dam and the Chief Joseph Dam, are also the largest in the United States; the Grand Coulee is the third largest in the world.
The dams also make it possible for ships to navigate the river, and provide irrigation. The dams in the United States are owned by the Federal Government (Army Corps of Engineers or Bureau of Reclamation), Public Utility Districts, and private power companies.
Grand Coulee Dam provides water for the Columbia Basin Project, one of the most extensive irrigation projects in the western United States. The project provides water to over 500,000 acres (2,000 km²) of fertile but arid lands in central Washington State. Water from the project has transformed the region from a wasteland barely able to produce subsistence levels of dry-land wheat crops to a major agricultural center. Important crops include apples, potatoes, alfalfa, wheat, corn (maize), barley, hops, beans, and sugar beets.
Although the dams provide benefits like clean, renewable energy, they drastically alter the landscape and ecosystem of the river. At one time the Columbia was one of the top salmon-producing river systems in the world. Previously active fishing sites, like Celilo Falls in the eastern Columbia River Gorge, have exhibited a sharp decline in fishing along the Columbia in the last century. The presence of dams, coupled with over-fishing, has played a major role in the reduction of salmon populations. Fish ladders[7] have been installed at some dam sites to help the fish journey to spawning waters. Grand Coulee Dam has no fish ladders and completely blocks fish migration to the upper half of the Columbia River system. Downriver of Grand Coulee, each dam’s reservoir is closely regulated by the Bonneville Power Administration, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and various Washington Public Utility Districts to ensure flow, flood control, and power generation objectives are met. Increasingly, hydro-power operations are required to meet standards under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and other agreements to manage operations to minimize impacts on salmon and other fish, and some conservation and fishing groups support removing four dams on the lower Snake River, the largest tributary of the Columbia.
The Hanford Site was established in 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project. It is located along the river in southeastern Washington on 586 mile² (1,520 km²) of some of the most fertile land in North America; at the time of its establishment, the area was considered a wasteland. The site served as a plutonium production complex with nine nuclear reactors and related facilities. Most of the facilities were shut down in the 1960s. The site is currently under control of the Department of Energy, and is a Superfund site. The Superfund cleanup is expected to be completed in 2030.
EPA studies and state monitoring programs have found significant levels of toxins in fish and the waters they inhabit within the basin. Accumulation of toxins in fish threatens the survival of fish species, and human consumption of these fish can lead to health problems. Many governments, communities and citizens have rallied to launch a long term and intense recovery effort to restore these remarkable fish.
Water quality is also an important factor in the survival of other wildlife and plants that grow in the Columbia River Basin. The states, Indian tribes, and federal government are all engaged in efforts to restore and improve the water, land, and air quality of the Columbia River Basin and have committed to work together to enhance and accomplish critical ecosystem restoration efforts. A number of important work efforts are currently underway, including Portland Harbor in the Lower Basin, Hanford in the Middle Basin and Lake Roosevelt in the Upper Basin.[8]
With the importance of the Columbia to the Pacific Northwest, it has made its way into the culture of the area and the nation. Celilo Falls, in particular, was an important economic and cultural hub of western North America for as long as 10,000 years.
Several Indian tribes have a historical and continuing presence on the Columbia River, most notably the Sinixt or Lakes people in Canada and in the U.S. the Colvile, Spokane, Yakama, Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs Tribes. In the upper Snake River and Salmon River basin the Shoshone Bannock Tribes are present. In the Lower Columbia River, the Cowlitz and Chinook Tribes are present, but these tribes are not federally recognized. The Yakama, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and Warm Springs Tribes all have treaty fishing rights in the Columbia River and tributaries.