Columbia River’s 200 Years As ‘Cord of Life of Northwest’ : Environment:This mighty waterway, 1,210 miles long, is a major source of electric power and irrigation. But the commercial development has a negative side.

Stand on this massive Columbia River dam and you can view salmon swimming up a concrete fish ladder, listen to the hum of electrical transmission towers, and gaze at fruit orchards along the shore.

This is not the same river that Robert Gray discovered 200 years ago.

But it is a microcosm of the uses and abuses the Columbia River has endured since Gray became the first white person to enter the river on May 11, 1792, nearly 500 miles south of here.

While the world commemorates the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ voyage to America, the Columbia River bicentennial has been largely ignored, except in the Northwest.

Yet the river’s discovery launched settlement and industries that are profoundly important today.

Aerospace, agriculture, aluminum and atom bombs all owe a debt to the 1,210-mile Columbia.

“This is one of the most powerful river courses in the world,” says Bill Lang, a professor at Washington State University. “It’s the cord of life of the Northwest.”

Europeans had heard legends of a great river of the West almost from the time of Columbus. But generations of explorers failed to prove such a river existed.

The spot where the massive Columbia pours into the Pacific Ocean had looked like a river to some passing mariners, but none dared try to sail past the treacherous bar to find out.

Gray, a fur trader hired by Boston businessmen, determined to test the theory during his 1792 voyage.

“Gray believed what he heard about the river being here,” said Garry Breckon, director of the Columbia River Bicentennial Commission in Portland, Ore.

Against the advice of Capt. George Vancouver of the British navy, Gray navigated his ship through the treacherous waters and into the estuary the morning of May 11.

“He must have been very lucky with regard to weather,” Breckon says. “He did it with no knowledge of the underwater terrain.”

Gray’s entry formed the basis for the later U.S. claim to the river over Great Britain. He named the river after his ship, the Columbia Rediviva.

But like many great discoveries, this one was not immediately appreciated.

“When we were over the bar, we found this to be a large river of fresh water, up which we steered,” Gray wrote in undramatic prose in his log.

Gray’s second mate, John Boit, was more moved.

“The river extended to the NE as far as the eye cou’d reach, and waters fit to drink as far down as the bars at the entrance,” Boit wrote in his log. “We directed our course up this noble river in search of a village.”

The Columbia Rediviva sailed a few miles upriver, made repairs and filled its water casks, as Gray traded with Indians for furs.

Breckon said the trading was not good, since Gray was primarily after sea otter pelts.

On May 20, Gray sailed out of the river and continued north to acquire more furs.

“I don’t think he realized how important what he did was,” Breckon said. “He dropped into obscurity. He probably died about 1806 of yellow fever and was buried at sea.”

The British quickly realized the importance.

Vancouver, the British navy captain, hustled to the river’s mouth to stake a British claim.

The HMS Chatham, led by Lt. William Broughton, succeeded in entering the Columbia and sailed 20 miles upriver. Broughton then traveled an additional 80 miles in a smaller boat to a site near present-day Vancouver, Wash.

Broughton contended that Gray had not actually entered the river itself but only a sound that preceded it.

That was the basis of the English claim that Broughton had actually claimed the river for his country. The matter was not settled until 1846 when the 49th parallel was established as the border between the United States and Canada.

Gray’s chart of his passage into the river was a key document in that decision. The chart is currently on display at a major Columbia River exhibition in Astoria, Ore.

“If the U.S. had not been able to establish a presence ahead of the British, we would now be living in Mexico and looking across the river at Canada,” Breckon says.

The first major use of the Columbia was for transportation into the interior.

The onslaught of Europeans proved a disaster for the Indian tribes.

“Disease wiped out half the native population by 1830,” Lang says. “Smallpox, diphtheria, cholera, malaria.”

In 1811, John Jacob Astor and his Pacific Fur Co. established Astoria, the first American settlement west of the Rocky Mountains, and began the commercialization of the region.

In the 1930s, hydroelectric dams arrived and the river’s benefits vastly expanded. The river offers about one-third of the potential hydropower in the United States.

These days, the river and its tributaries:

* Provide irrigation water for more than 1 million acres of crops and billions of dollars in revenue. Most of the nation’s apples, frozen french fries, cherries and 40 other crops are watered by the Columbia and its tributaries.

* Provide hydroelectric power that is shipped throughout the West, and made possible the industrialization of the Northwest. A third of the power is used by aluminum reduction mills that produce 40% of the nation’s supply, including much of the skin for Boeing airliners.

* Provide the water highway by which barges as far inland as Lewiston, Ida., carry Western grain to seaports for export.

* Provided the power and cooling water to operate nine plutonium reactors at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state, which made most of that key ingredient in nuclear weapons.

* Provide a wealth of tourist and recreation opportunities, including the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, established in 1986, plus reservoirs for fishing and boating and extensive museum and visitor centers at dams.

But all this development has a negative side that has become prominent only in recent years.

The dams decimated the wild salmon runs, devastating Indian religious and cultural practices, and spawning an ongoing debate on how to restore the endangered species.

The potential effect of saving the salmon could run into billions of dollars. About $1 billion has been spent since 1981 with mixed results.

Spectacular Celilo Falls was inundated by the waters of The Dalles Dam, destroying an ancient Indian fishing ground that is still mourned 30 years later.

Also, the Hanford nuclear reservation produced nuclear waste either dumped directly into the river or to ground water that eventually reached the river. The nation’s most polluted nuclear site will require billions to clean up, and may have damaged the health of thousands of nearby residents.

The river also suffers from siltation caused by logging, and pollution from runoff of agricultural chemicals and chemicals used in paper mills, Lang says.

For all the development, the Columbia remains relatively clean by the standards of other highly developed river systems, Lang says.

One reason is the lack of population along its banks.

For much of its course through the United States it winds past farms, desert lands and between the walls of a huge gorge. The cities are small population centers such as Wenatchee, Wash., Richland-Kennewick-Pasco, Wash., and The Dalles, Ore.

Only near the end of its course at Portland, Ore., does the river reach a major city.

In addition, the river’s two greatest resources--irrigation water and electricity--were easily transported elsewhere and users do not need to locate nearby, Lang says.