Rising water in the June freshet flooded the slough and lakes. Pools became spawning beds for crappies, perch, bass, sun fish, chubs, catfish, mudcats, carp, suckers, crawfish and rare flying fish. Sandy Scales said the Columbia was the Sandy River, one and the same time at an early time.
Brother Holmes, O.S.M., St. Johns Resident
The Columbia Slough plays a critical role in the Portland Metropolitan area’s flood control system. Once a branch of the Columbia River, the slough connected to the Columbia on the east, the Willamette on the west. The water body flooded annually and created an inland wetland storing water during heavy rainfall and releasing it slowly. During the twentieth century as communities developed along the Columbia, people began calling for federal assistance in flood control. Since the 1910s, the slough has become a stormwater conveyance system. Surrounded by levees, it has been diked, filled and transformed from a natural flood control plain to a completely managed system.
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and Roget’s Thesaurus define a slough as:
- A place of deep mud or mire; a swamp
- An inlet on a river; also a backwater
- A creek in a marsh or tide flat (backwater)
- Bogs, swamps, fens, bayous, estuaries, everglades, moors, quagmires
- A state of moral degradation or spiritual dejection – “sloughy”
All of these terms are synonymous with the word “wetland.”
Bureau of Environmental Services description of the Slough – “Basin Focus: Columbia Slough”
