Willamette Falls Past and Future

A few days ago I had the experience of touring the former Blue Heron Paper Plant, at Oregon City, with members of the media, to discuss this history of this incredible site at the Willamette Falls on the eastern shore of the river.  This is the place, in the 1820s, where Dr. John McLaughlin established what would become the capital of the Oregon Territory.  The Falls have been a draw since prehistoric times and as the second largest waterfall, by volume, in the United States (after Niagara), they quickly became the focus of a variety of Oregon’s earliest industries.  McLaughlin himself had a small race cut out of the bedrock to power a sawmill and by 1865 what became the Oregon Woolen Mills was located here.  In 1908, having left his position at what is now the West Linn Paper Company, across the river, W. P. Hawley established his own firm, the Hawley Pulp and Paper Company, on McLaughlin’s old claim and soon was producing 200,000 tons of paper products on a daily basis.

Willamette Falls, from the old Hawley Powerhouse site, June 2012

Hawley built a booming business, based on his own decades of expertise, a ready supply of timber, and the abundant power of the Willamette Falls.  He rented PGE’s old “Station A” out at the head of the falls, built his own buildings for paper machines and mills, and the business spread out along Oregon’s Main Street, sharing the block with a hotel, a laundry and McLaughlin’s decrepit house.  As he grew the business (and gave the house to the city, which moved it up the hill), Hawley’s structures became larger, more sturdy (concrete, not wood) and slowly took over the entire block.  In the late 1920s Hawley built two new massive, concrete and glass buildings on the east side of the street  (known as Mill B and Paper Machine No. 4), creating a clean streetscape of multi-story industral buildings.  Eventually Hawley's paper company took over the old Woolen Mill property too, occupying over twenty acres lining everything on both sides of Main Street between the railroad line and the river.

Hawley sold the business to Publisher’s Paper in the 1940s and then a series of ownership changes in the 1980s and 90s culminated with the formation of employee-owned Blue Heron Paper Company, which sadly closed its doors about a year ago.  The future of the site is unclear, though Metro has expressed interest in providing the public better access to “Niagara of the Pacific.”  That is why the media was interested and that is why there is a lot of discussion on-going about the opportunities, and the liabilities, that result from over 180 years of industrial uses.  Last week, on Wednesday, it was a beautiful day at the Willamette Falls.  A lot of people are working to try figure out to create a situation where more Oregonians can enjoy the view McLaughlin did.

Willamette Falls Industrial Area

For some years I have had multiple reasons to research, study, and write about the history of the Willamette Falls Industrial Area, a complex slice of Oregon at the Falls, lining both banks of the river between Oregon City and West Linn.  A few weeks ago I up there again, touring ‘round with a film crew for an upcoming documentary on one of Oregon’s most fascinating few acres.

Famed as “end of the Oregon Trail,” this area was also the start of Oregon industry.  Water power was a key element in city building in the 19^th century, a fact that wasn’t lost on John McLaughlin who started to carve a mill race out of the bedrock in 1829.  As the Oregon Territory grew, so did interest in the falls, which boosters soon envisioned as the Niagara Falls or the Lowell, of Oregon.  In 1865 one of Oregon’s first woolen mills opened here, followed by a pulp mill, and then, in 1873 a public-private partnership built the Willamette Falls Locks and Canal, breaking the shipping monopoly that had controlled freight shipments and stifled development for decades.  Another pulp mill, a more successful one, the Willamette Falls Pulp and Paper Company, started operation in 1883.

Beginning in the mid-1880s, an entrepreneur named Edward Eastham started to assemble property and water rights on both sides of the river with the idea of generating electricity to power Portland.  In June 1889 Eastham’s company, then called the Willamette Falls Electric Company, transmit DC power from the Falls to downtown Portland, a distance of 12 miles.  Not much to us, but historically significant as the first “long-distance” electrical transmission in the United States.  In 1890, having converted the plant, “Station A,” to Alternating Current, the company did it again, even though George Westinghouse, who manufactured the new AC generators, wasn’t sure it would work.  Five years later generation at the Falls was shifted across the river, to a huge new plant designed by Thomas W. Sullivan.  Dubbed “Station B,” that plant would provide virtually every watt of power in the Portland area for the next decade. 

By 1906 the Willamette Falls Electric Company, along with more than 30 other companies, would become the Portland Railway Light and Power Company.  Today the company is known as Portland General Electric.  And Station B, renamed the T.W. Sullivan Hydroelectric Project, still produces power at the Willamette Falls.  It’s the oldest continuously operated hydroelectric plant in the country.

Willamette Basin Project

All through the 19^th and early 20^th century the Willamette River flooded, causing damage to agriculture and settled areas that increased as Oregon’s population grew.  By the mid-1930s, as so often happened during that era of belief that government, people, could actually do great things when they worked together for a common good, state leaders were able to encourage the Federal government to consider solutions to the problem.  The Federal government, as it so often did, turned to the US Army Corps of Engineers and the result, authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1936, became known as the Willamette Basin Project.

The Willamette Basin Project was a series of multi-purpose dams, at one time as many as 19, that would control the river and its tributaries as far south as Cottage Grove, to provide for flood control, irrigation and recreational opportunities.  The Corps got started building several of the dams in the late 1930s and then, after the distraction of WWII, got back to work after the massive Vanport Flood of 1948 provided extra emphasis on how dangerous Oregon’s rivers could be.  The last of the 15 dams ultimately built in the Willamette Project, the Blue River Dam, was completed in 1969.

I’ve worked on several of these dams in the past, giving me an appreciation for the scope of Corps (and Oregon) vision during this New Deal-Great Society period of infrastructure construction (even Ike’s Administration, generally opposed to Federal funding, saw merit in the Willamette Basin Project).  At the moment I am working on the Fall Creek Dam and Reservoir, located near Lowell, Oregon.  Fall Creek is an earthen embankment dam, almost a mile long at its crest (5,100 feet) that rises 180’ and impounds Fall Creek, creating a reservoir just under 7 miles long.  Fall Creek was completed, at a cost of $22 million in 1969.

Now, as is happening on several of the Willamette Basin dams, a third party has filed an application to built a small hydropower project on the downstream face of the Fall Creek Dam, generating a small amount of electricity, about 10 megawatts, with the dam’s outflow.  These so-called micro-power projects can add significantly to Oregon’s generation capacity without much environmental impact (the dams are already there) but they trigger Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, sending me out into the field with a camera and into the archive on yet another dam. 

Gold Ray - DONE

Earlier this week, in the snow, I went out to the Gold Ray Hydroelectric site to review the progress on the interpretative center that Jackson County, Oregon SHPO and NMFS installed as part of the mitigation for the removal of that historic property.  As I have written earlier, we elected to salvage an entire power generation system, from turbine to switch panel, that would explain how this very early power system in southern Oregon worked.  Interpretative panels, with historic photos as well as some of the HAER images taken prior to demolition, were installed on the former site of the Clubhouse, upslope from the river, and the mammoth generators, pulleys and other elements were moved there so that public could appreciate, and understand, what they are.

I was quite pleased with the way everything worked out (you never know, sitting in front of your computer, how something is going to play in 3D).  I think this one played out pretty well and everyone involved seems pleased.  The County has some minor security/vandalism protection to install, so the “public” doesn’t run off with any of the artifacts, but other than that, the project is complete.

If you live in southern Oregon, or are passing through, and want to see a very unusual example of an early power generation system, tour a spot on the Rogue River that hasn’t been generally accessible for more than a century, or just appreciate a great view of a river restoration project and the Table Rocks, you should check the Gold Ray site out.  Jackson County hopes to have something available for the public by mid-2011.

On a more personal note, 2011 is looking to be an interesting year.  January should have me at the Oregon Coast, documenting what is purported to be one of the largest swing bridges in the United States, among other things.  I’m sure I will find something to write about.  Happy New Year!

Gold Ray Dam update

There isn’t much left of the Gold Ray Dam, on the Rogue River, near Tolo, downstream from Gold Hill, Oregon.  The 1941 concrete dam has been entirely removed, along with the 1904 log crib dam that had been buried underwater, just upstream.  Turns out, unbeknownst to anybody involved with the project, that sometime after November 1941 (when they tried to burn the old dam) they went ahead and covered the face of it with about 12” of concrete or gunite.  This made removal much harder and, unfortunately, meant that we couldn’t save a small section of the log dam for the proposed interpretative displays.

The powerhouse, along with its early 1905-era equipment, is also being removed.  Jackson County, which owns the property, and Slayden Construction, which is contracted to remove the in-stream features (I am under contract to Slayden), have done an incredible job of developing the interpretative kiosk that is to be located up the hill, overlooking the dam site, as part of our Section 106 mitigation plan.    

One entire generation unit, the turbines, the wicket gate controls, the lower and upper pulleys (those that were rope driven), plus the 750kW General Electric generator and the exciter will be removed from the powerhouse and relocated to the old Clubhouse pad. (That's one of the 42" diameter turbines, above, freed of the muck for the first time in four decades).  Interpretative panels will explain what these features are, how they worked, and the history of the Gold Ray site. Should be a pretty effective display.

Look, it doesn’t have to be PRETTY!

Sigh. There seems to be some confusion among the public, and too many in the profession, that "historic" and "well-designed" are actually synonyms. I know, I know…not YOU, right? You get it. You completely understand that "historic" is about, well, history, and association with people, places or events that are significant in our past. It's great when a historically significant property is easy on the eyes too, but it just doesn't have to be, does it? We've all learned that even an ugly house that happens to have been the birthplace of an important leader, is going to be "historic" independent of its design. And that is the way it should be.

 

Still, I am often in the situation of facing down doubting people, architects, elected leaders, whomever, who arch their eyebrows, sigh, and utter some variation of "You think that is historic? Are you nuts?" Given the nature of my practice, with more than  a moderate sampling of bridges, dams, powerhouses, and whatnot, I get to work with plenty of, uh, "gritty" resources.  I get that, that, "look" more frequently that I care to admit.

 

[True confession] I don't really like Victorians. I think they are sort of fussy, but I can surely appreciate why people go gaga over the details on the best examples. But hey, to each his own, right. Instead, I tend to see beauty in resources that others see as awkward, or just don't see at all. Ambursen dams, for example. What a neat type they are. A "hollow" dam (you can actually walk through some of them, on this scary walkway). It's an elegant design solution (they take less concrete and can be built faster too). And they are rare…which is what made the first one I worked on, at River Mill, on the Clackamas River, significant (that and that it was actually designed by Nils Ambursen himself). But I will admit that while I happen to find Ambursen Dams fascinating, none of them are likely to make the next cover of Sunset, if you know what I mean.

 

When I give my "Our Friend the National Register" lecture (my basic general public lecture) I like to remind people that of the four eligibility criterion for listing on the National Register of Historic Places only one actually has ANYTHING to with the way the property actually looks, whether its "pretty" or well-designed. The rest have to  do with association, or potential information (for archeology) that are linked to integrity, but really don't have much connection to fine design. Those gritty resources are the really interesting ones, the ones that make our way of life tick, that make the people who built, or designed, or lived in the fancy house on the hill the money to pay for it. And is almost always the gritty properties that actually created the community, created the jobs that brought people there and kept them there too.  Or made sure the community wasn't isolated from the rest of the world. I think those places, the bridges, mills, dams, and powerhouses and transmission lines, are fascinating. Historic certainly, and maybe, if you squint your eye, a little bit "pretty" too.

Gold Ray Dam

In 1903 two brothers, Dr. C. R. and Frank Ray, were involved with the Braden Mine, a fairly large operation east of Gold Hill, Oregon.  Dr. Ray, who must have managed his far wealthier brother’s investments, convinced Frank that the mine would be more efficient if it operated on electric power rather than steam and so the two brothers set about acquiring property on the Rogue River near Tolo, to build a dam and powerhouse.  The Gold Ray Dam, as it is known, was completed as an arched timber structure in 1903-04 and the concrete powerhouse went into operation, powering the mine.  Soon the Ray’s realized there was more money to be made selling electricity to others than in mining.  Their company evolved first into the Rogue River Electric Company and then, after a merger with the Siskiyou Electric Power & Light Company, of Yreka, California in 1911, formed the California-Oregon Power Company.  COPCO, as that company would become known, remained the primary power provider for most of southwestern Oregon and northern California for the next fifty years, until it was merged into Pacific Power and Light, now PacifiCorp,  in 1961.

Gold Ray Dam, which produced just 1.5 megawatts of power, a small output, kept chugging  out power as the water flowed.  A new concrete dam was built in 1941 and COPCO periodically considered expanding the old plant but never did.  The 1905 generation units, connected to the turbines by rope drives, and the original switching gear, all mounted on marble panels as was typical of the times, are all still there.  By 1972, after much study, PacifiCorp determined that the old pioneer Gold Ray Hydroelectric Project was no longer economically viable, as fish passage issues and the rest continued to increase costs that could not be offset by its small power output.  They donated the dam, and the powerhouse, and about 27 acres surrounding it at one of the prettiest little spots on the Rogue River, to Jackson County, which had dreams of developing it as a park and historic site celebrating what very nearly amounts to the birth of electricity in the Rogue Valley. 

That dream was stalled, first by a County plan to put the powerhouse back on line, and finally just by lack of funding.  The powerhouse fell to vandalism, and disrepair.  The dam became an increasing obstacle to fish passage and calls for its removal grew.  Some appreciate the wetlands upstream of the dam but the reality is that the Gold Ray Dam has, at least at the moment, outlived its usefulness.  This year, as part of the President’s stimulus package, the County has received funding to study alternatives for the future of the Gold Ray Dam, ranging from removal to rehabilitation and renewed power generation.  There is the potential for more funding to improve fish passage on the Rogue if the removal option is determined to make the most sense but the county will wisely explore all of the possible alternatives for Gold Ray before making its decision.

Over the next few months, shooting toward an in-water work window next Summer, I and an entire gaggle of others will be looking at all the various impacts that removal, or rehabilitation, will have on the Rogue River and, at least in my case, on the history that the Gold Ray Dam and Powerhouse represent. 

Going the Extra Mile- "Public" Architecture done right....

Given that my last entry essentially amounts to a statement about the lack of vision and commitment some public entities place on their history or responsibility to the larger community, I’ve been thinking about a time when the situation was reversed and public entities, government, went the extra mile to set a standard.  Much of that relates to the New Deal, when FDR and crew took advantage of the nation’s economic condition to put as many people to work as they could, building infrastructure (like roads, parks and power systems) that we still enjoy.  My BPA work comes to mind,  along with the Oregon Caves Chateau project, as does Ken Burns’ current documentary on the National Parks.  Both BPA and the parks were considered near-socialism a the time, by the way, but it appears that we as a nation have somehow survived.

I think a more recent example of government going the extra mile can be found at the Grand Coulee Dam, operated by the Bureau of Reclamation.  BOR isn’t generally the first Federal agency people think of when it comes to supporting fine design but that’s what they did, when they hired Marcel Breuer to design Coulee’s Third Powerhouse, home of the largest electrical generation units in the world.

Breuer (1902-1981) was one of the Bauhaus boys and gained fame for his design of the Wassilly Chair, the first of those continuous chrome tubular sled-based designs that are still popular.  Like so many European modernists (he was a Hungarian Jew), Breuer left Germany in the 1930s and eventually ended up teaching at the Harvard School of Architecture with Walter Gropius.  As a practicing architect Breuer design scores of buildings, among them the Whitney Museum of Art. 

Breuer's Visitor Center, designed in 1967, is a rather unexpectedly round  building among all the linearity of the huge Grand Coulee Dam that makes it quite striking.  It's well done and interesting on the interior too.  The Third Powerhouse has this amazing textural exterior of folded sculptural triangles of concrete, that form a massive battered stupa (look  it up) below the dam.  It rather looks as if it is covered with origami and comments from Visitors Center display report that the folds have a structural component, stiffening the shell of building.  Form, Function, etc.  Those modernists, huh?  Interior images of the powerhouse reveal decorative terrazzo floors and fine metal work.  Now THAT is public architecture (although the public apparently isn't allowed inside the powerhouse anymore, thanks to security).  I give BOR credit for hiring Breuer to begin with, and for maintaining the integrity of his design since the late-1960s.
  

Supposedly I will have an opportunity to work on this project in the near future, as there is some proposed modifications to the powerhouse generation in the works that will involve BPA and their substation up the hill.  I’m looking forward to the chance to perhaps see the inside of the powerhouse.  There are at least two other interesting design items at Grand Coulee that intrigue me...first the gold skinned "Public Safety Building" and more directly tied to the project, the fascinating "shoji-arch" like t-lines that lead up the hill.  Wonder if they are by Breuer too, or just took some inspiration from his efforts.  Great public architecture is like that....it has the power to inspire others.

Tracking the Elusive T-Line

Yeah, I know, it's not what you thought "restoration consultants" did, but it's what this one is doing. Driving 1500 plus miles in the last four days, trying to unravel maps, aerial images, Garmin GPS locations and drive all at the same time (not really..Joyce is navigating and doing a fine job of it, thank you very much) in search of miles and miles and miles of Transmission Lines that run all over the Pacific Northwest (or at least, at the moment, northern Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana). It's a good thing the T-lines themselves standout from the landscape but DRIVING to the substations is occasionally a challenge (I have only given up once so far though....at Dworshak, where my definitely not 4WD vehicle wasn't up to the grade). The payoff, when you find what you are looking for, is worth it though. T-Lines are quite remarkable, when you actually stop to think about them (and yes, I realize most people don't).

The system built by Bonneville Power Administration over the past seventy or so years is really a pretty remarkable achievement. Of course, I am rarely disappointed by the audacity of engineers to design such a grid and make it all work. Or of the men (and one presumes, women) who actually go out and plant these steel and wood towers in neat lines over mountains, streams and valleys, from Point A to Point B.

As to the question of "what does this mean" and why is somebody like me looking at transmission lines, of all things, I am still puzzling that out. I can tell you that the Pacific Northwest wouldn't be what it is, would not have developed as it has, without BPA and its miles of transmission lines (or, to be fair, without the Army Corps and Bureau of Reclamation dams that generate the power to begin with). Clearly, from the perspective of the National Register, there is little doubt that BPA's construction constitutes a "significant theme" within the history of the PNW, if not the nation. How these lines relate that significance, and more importantly from BPA's standpoint, how their "integrity" is evaluated in a manner that allows their continued utility, remains an open question.

On to Washington, and tomorrow, Grand Coulee!

Wickiup Dam

Oregon, with all its streams and rivers, was a major focus for government investment during the 20th century. Hydroelectric dams, like Bonneville or John Day, get most of attention, but other major projects developed by the Army Corps of Engineers or the Bureau of Reclamation focused on flood control, recreation or irrigation. Given the typically effusive names of the era, the "Willamette Project" consists of a series of about 15 separate dams that were designed to control flow in that basin, mostly for flood control. The stories of the streams breaching their banks as late as the 1930s and 1940s are pretty amazing.


On the other side of the Cascades, storing water for irrigation offered the potential of huge agricultural development in an area that lacked an economy. The Wickiup Dam, one of the first elements of the "Deschutes Project" (there are those creative Feds again) was built west of La Pine beginning in the late 1930s by the men of the Civilian Conservation Corps. That's the water outlet construction, in a National Archives image (See, I told you can find all sorts of things on the Internet). When the irrigation canal was finally thrown open, in 1946, it was a cause for huge celebration. "The joyous welcome to the water, which theoretically came from the 180,000 acre foot Wickiup reservoir more than 100 south of Madras, opened at 11:00 am with a parade at the Madras airbase, where Queen Evelyn Kelley and her court served as royal hostesses" effused the Bend Bulletin. Jefferson County sure knew how to throw a party.

Today the Wickiup Dam is still operated on behalf of the US Government by the Bureau of Reclamation. As a part of a project that is considering the viability of a low-power, seasonal, generation facility that could be constructed at the Dam, we are evaluating whether or not the Wickiup Dam and Reservoir should be considered historically significant. Should be interesting to learn more about how this project developed, and how it changed Central Oregon.