Just a few miles from the campground, we stop at the Visitor Center at The Dalles Dam.  The parking lot is empty and we wonder if the Visitor Center is even open. We park and  our VW Camper is looking lonely but brave all by itself in this vast parking lot.  The Visitor Center IS open. We are the only visitors and have the place to ourselves except for the volunteer staff that is either very friendly or just really excited to have visitors. Regardless, they give us directions to view all the different displays around the facility and encourage us to watch the movie. This is a fascinating visit and we enjoy the displays and movie about the development of the gorge and the dams and its effects on the Salmon.

We learn that The Dalles Dam is one of the last dams built on the Columbia, having been completed in 1957.  It forms a lake that we would have thought it was simply the river running wide if we had not been told it was a lake!  Before the Dam was built, the area above it was a 10 mile stretch of rapids. Early on, the rapids were circumvented by using a canal originally built in the 1800s, and then expanded in the 1920’s.  Now the ships and barges move up and downstream via a lock.

The rapids had been a natural ‘ladder’ for Salmon (and other fish) moving up river.  Now they use man-made “Fish Ladders” which were constructed as part of an agreement between the US Government and the River Indian Tribes to protect the Salmon spawning run and their return to the sea.