The Salmon Detour
As power companies eye the Priest Rapids dam, locals joke about putting up road signs to redirect the fish.
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 fish cannery industry of Washington and Oregon is determined to prevent the building of the Priest Rapids dam unless some way is provided for the salmon to get over the 90-foot dam to reach the spawning grounds above. They say that unless this is done their industry will be cut almost in half and they will be damaged to the extent of about $5,000,000 annually. At a hearing in Seattle, representatives of the canneries and power companies appointed committees to evolve a plan to allow the fish to pass. Influenced by the road signs that bob up overnight along various highways, F. J. Bonn suggested a simple solution: place 'Road Closed, Detour' signs in the Columbia at the mouths of the Snake and Yakima rivers, and the salmon will do what all travelers do—cuss a little, perhaps, but take the detour.
“Place 'Road Closed, Detour' signs in the Columbia at the mouths of the Snake and Yakima rivers, and the salmon will do what all travelers do.”
The conflict between hydroelectric power and the Columbia River's salmon runs has defined the region for a century. While the joke about road signs is charming, the underlying tension over the Priest Rapids dam—which would eventually be built—foreshadowed the near-extinction of salmon populations that environmentalists and Indigenous nations struggle to restore today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.