Restoring Celilo Falls Celilo Falls has always been phantom of
history to me, since I born a few years after the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers buried the falls behind The Dalles Dam in
1957. My understanding of the falls and the loss it now
represents has come from old photos and maps, and a few shaky
film images. Yet for many, the falls and the native culture
surrounding them are alive and vibrant in their memories, thanks
to seeing and experiencing them first-hand. For Native
Americans, the vivid memories only add to the pain of losing a
place that quite literally defined a people for millennia. The
idea of restoring the falls — even temporarily — has been
suggested over the years, usually to be slapped down quickly by
the Corps of Engineers as unfeasible, or even dangerous. In the
late 1980s, a brief, 30th anniversary movement to temporarily
draw down the pool behind the dam briefly gained local momentum
before the federal agencies killed any talk of the idea. The
Corps likely realized that revealing the fa