All the Water for All the Land
slogan of the Umatilla River Irrigation League
In some parts of the year, why you [could] walk all over it. You know, going between here and Hermiston, I used to walk along the rocks, along the river. It just had trickles running.
Margaret D’Estrella interview, 1999.
Except for farms along the rivers and a few communities, at the turn of the century the region was still one of wide open spaces. Jackrabbits, rattlesnakes, and wild game birds were as plentiful as the herds of cattle, sheep, and horses thriving on the plentiful bunchgrass of the arid Umatilla Basin.
Control of the rivers determined the agricultural potential of the land. With the Reclamation Act of 1902, irrigated farming became possible through federal government assistance, and an era of government irrigation projects began on the Umatilla River. Settlers living in Umatilla City irrigated land with Columbia and Umatilla River water. By 1926, so much water was appropriated for irrigation that the Umatilla ran dry in the summer and early fall. Salmon that had spawned for centuries in the pools and rocks of the eighty-mile river became extinct.
My granddad told me one time that he saw salmon so thick in the Umatilla River, you could walk across the river on their backs, but that was back in the late 1800s. And the irrigation project changed all that.
Alva Stephens, lifelong Umatilla resident
East Oregonian article about Furnish Dam, built in 1909- “Brown Silt Kills Dam; Old Problem”
