The Whistle Heard 'Round the River
As the Dalles-Celilo canal prepares to open, cities along the Columbia plan a cacophonous celebration involving steamships, patriotic noise-making, and even train engines parked at the riverbank to add to the din.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Chamber of Commerce committee preparing the celebration for the opening of the Dalles-Celilo canal is going to ask the O-W. R. N. to send six engines down to Umatilla from the Pendleton roundhouse for the sole purpose of whistling to the steamers and adding to the cheerful noise. This, too, in spite of the fact that the great canal is guaranteed to shave down freight rates. The celebration will start at Lewiston, Idaho, May 3, and will end at Astoria, May 7. Major Jay J. Morrow served as the supervising engineer for the project, which cost the government $4,850,000. It adds 500 miles to the continuous stretch of the river, bypassing the falls with five massive locks. On May 4, the fleet will drop down the river to Kennewick and Pasco. At Wallula, four veterans of Colonel Steptoe’s dragoon command will place the gangplank for Mrs. H. P. Isaacs, who arrived in the region in 1847, to be the first to step ashore.
“If you haven’t a whistle yell. If you are dumb rap on a box with a stick.”
The Celilo Canal was a massive engineering feat that fundamentally altered the Columbia River, a transformation that eventually led to the permanent flooding of Celilo Falls under The Dalles Dam in 1957. Today, the loss of those falls remains a profound point of contention regarding the displacement of Indigenous fishing grounds and culture.
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