The Willamette River lies in the northwest quarter of the state of Oregon in the valley of two mountain ranges. Both ranges feed tributaries that empty into the main stem of the Willamette River. The Willamette is 230 miles long and drains an area of 11,250 square miles before it reaches the Columbia River near Portland, Oregon. The river valley is home to two-thirds of the state’s population, a population that doubled between 1940 and 1970. Starting in the 1940s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers commenced building a series of thirteen dams in the Willamette Basin, mostly for the purposes of flood control.
Cottage Grove and Dorena dams are part of a system that controls 28 percent of the water flow in the Willamette watershed. The U.S. Army Corps regulates this complex system from its reservoir regulation headquarters in Portland, Oregon, over three hundred miles from Cottage Grove. Engineers proposed these dams to mitigate flooding in the valley. However, manipulation of the river’s course was nothing new to the area. White settlers set their sights on changing the river’s course as early as the mid-1800s. They were also determined to rid the valley of its native population to make way for homesteads and industry.
