Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/104

92 rate of interest as well as by estimates based on cost of reconstruction. Though these locks were built thirty-five years ago (the state furnishing $200,000, about two-thirds of the cost of construction), the legislature of Oregon, in 1907, appropriated $300,000 "contingent upon the United States appropriating the sum of $300,000, or a sum sufficient to acquire by purchase, condemnation, or construction," a canal around the falls at this place. In the Willamette, above these falls, the problem of improvement is quite similar to that, say, of the Illinois River. The Willamette drains the bed of a former arm of the ocean and has not the firm banks of the upper Columbia and its tributaries. These represent channels worn in a sheet of lava that was universally spread over that region. Something like half a million has been used on the upper Willamette and its tributaries, mainly in dredging and snagging, in other words, in maintenance.

At the cascades the project that was adopted in 1877 was not completed in modified form, so as to be open to navigation, until 1896. It has cost some $4,000,000, and provides for the passage of boats of a maximum draft of seven feet. But to open the river at the cascades without opening it at The Dalles-Celilo obstructions, forty-five miles above, answers comparatively little purpose. The "Inland Empire" lies on beyond Celilo Falls. The problem presented by these latter obstructions seems to have quite appalled the earlier engineers. Several projects in turn have been recommended for overcoming these obstructions. The first contemplated a canal and locks and some straightening of the river at an estimated cost of over $10,000,000. A plan for a boat railway was next adopted and appropriations were even made for entering upon the construction of it. It was expected to cost $3,000,000. The river men objected and the engineers do not seem to have been quite sure of its practicability. The project that now stands contemplates a continuous canal sixty-five feet wide at the bottom and eight feet deep. The canal is to have four locks