U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Little White Salmon National Fish Hatchery Welcome Welcome to Little White Salmon National Fish Hatchery on the beautiful Little White Salmon River—a mini-gorge within the Columbia Gorge. The main visitor area is at the upper hatchery, beyond the bridge. Here you will find the visitor center, fish ladder, overlook, and parking. Inside the visitor center are exhibits, and public restrooms. The hatchery spawning operation can be viewed from the exhibits room. Adult salmon holding ponds are located inside this building. Viewing windows are downstairs in the basement. Watching salmon swim is soothing. The hatchery is open daily from 7:30 am to 4:00 pm. Here are key times to visit: • May 1: fish ladder open for spring Chinook adults The adult holding pond is inside • May - August: spring Chinook the spawning/ salmon viewing exhibits building. The big fish • August: spring Chinook salmon can be viewed spawning on Tuesdays (call 509- downstairs. 538-2755 for specific dates) Torsten Kjellstrand, The Oregonian • Late August thru November: Watch adults spawn naturally in the small stretch of river between the upper and lower facilities • Late September – October: upriver bright fall Chinook arrive • Late October – early November: spawning upriver bright fall Chinook • mid-April: spring Chinook salmon smolts released • Early July: upriver bright fall Chinook salmon smolts released • November – February: drive the entry road and watch bald eagles map © Google Earth Common merganser and Chinook salmon racing on the Little White Salmon River. © Paul Thomson Paul © Fishing Drano Drano Lake is one of the most Birding, hiking, Feel free to walk the entry road. Lake popular recreational salmon fisheries fish watching There are many opportunities to see in Washington. Many professional birds here. In winter, bald eagles of Above, a limit guides take clients here. All varying ages work the islands where of Drano Lake Washington State fishing regulations the river meets the lake. Watch as springers in the and license requirements apply. common mergansers dive for salmon boat. Please note that there is no fishing eggs, or American dippers rolling in north of the buoys at the river’s the river’s ripples. © Caveman Jim mouth. There is a Skamania County boat ramp off of State Route 14, east You can also “fish watch” by walking of our entrance road. Here are key along the river from the entry gate fishing dates: to the upper hatchery. It is fun to watch salmon dart about in the river’s • May: Peak of spring Chinook cold clear water—you might even return to Drano Lake and best witness nest digging and spawning. time to catch these fish When adult fish Just past the raceway building, look are present, look for a grassy area on the bank. This • Mid-July thru August: Summer for them leaping is a good place to see large groups of steelhead seek out thermal refuge against the dam. salmon. Continue on and watch fish in Drano Lake during their upriver © Paul Thomson leap against the barrier dam (opposite migration. Steelhead fishery at its the bridge), or watch the fish ladder peak. located directly below the wooden overlook deck. • September thru October: Best time to catch an upriver bright fall Kayakers The Little White Salmon River has Chinook from Drano Lake. become increasingly popular among Drano Lake expert kayakers. These adrenaline can be fished We are happy to offer the unique junkies put in at the bridge near from boat, bank, experience of salmon fishing to the Willard National Fish Hatchery and wheelchair, or mobility impaired. A paved path off of pull out just beyond our gate. Some walker. the entry road allows lakeside access consider it the most difficult regularly Kayaker going USFWS image to wheelchairs, walkers, or those with run stretch of river on the West Coast. canes. over Spirit Falls. Only expert paddlers should attempt © Mike Leeds this Class V run. Hatchery purpose Established in 1896, Little White Salmon National Fish Hatchery (NFH) is the oldest working hatchery on the Columbia today. The Columbia is a Chinook salmon river. Here we raise two kinds: upriver brights (fall), Wikipedia and spring Chinook. The hatchery operates as dictated by sound salmon science, several federal agency policies, congressionally enacted laws, and ratified treaties. Columbia River salmon hatchery mandates are complex and multi-layered with numerous “co-managing” stakeholders. There is a scientific or politically mandated reason for The Spokesman-Review The all that the hatchery does. Some are CRITFC.org A dog watches more straightforward than others. salmon at Bonneville As mitigation for the adverse effects Dam (above). of Bonneville Dam on salmon, The hatchery Congress passed the Mitchell Act in mitigates for 1938. This act funds conservation of adverse impacts Columbia salmon, and pays for state on salmon caused and federal hatcheries, fish screens by dams. to keep young fish out of agricultural fields, habitat restoration, and research into salmon biology/ecology. The hatchery receives funding from this act and for mitigation of salmon loss due to dams further upriver. Little White Salmon NFH produces State of Oregon Archives (1431) salmon to honor the 1855 treaties Fishing between the U.S. and Northwest Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission platforms on Tribes. Specifically, the hatchery Drano Lake are supports the Yakama Nation’s fishery. evidence of the In exchange for land in Oregon, Yakama Nation’s Washington, and Idaho, the Tribes intent to live by stipulated that they be allowed to the terms of the fish for salmon at their “usual and 1855 treaty. accustomed places” in perpetuity. Put Allen Thomas, simply, it would be a treaty violation if The Columbian there are no fish to catch. A map shows ceded Tribal lands (light) and reservations (dark) of four treaty groups within the Columbia Basin (top). Salmon fishing is a spiritual and practical tradition for Native people of the river (catching, and drying, middle). Once this area boasted fishing spots along the Cascades and the mouth of the Little White Salmon River to rival even Celilo Falls (bottom). Benjamin Gifford photo, OrHi7784 A Chinookan Although the Yakama Nation— Chinook groups occupied the village on Sahaptin language speakers—is Columbia Basin from the ocean to The Drano Lake affiliated with the hatchery site today, Dalles for hundreds maybe thousands it was a group of Chinookan speakers of years. In the Portland basin, where that lived on the banks of Drano Lake the Willamette meets the Columbia, in times past. History labels them the there was a Chinook “city” not just Chilluckittequaw or White Salmon large by North America standards, people. They were allied with a larger but one of the most populous spots on group living in Hood River. By mid- Art of Museum Stark the planet circa 1700. 19th century, they were referred to as Head flattening the Cascade Indians. was for the Chinook language speakers controlled Chinook upper classes both shores of the Columbia from the canoes were a The truth is that the first written in Chinookan coast to the Long Narrows. Their much desired accounts of people in the Columbia culture. trade network encompassed Canada, commodity. Gorge occur after disease had already northern California and interior to Lewis & Clark’s decimated the population. Major the Rockies. They leveraged salmon, men thought smallpox epidemics, contracted wapato, eulachon oil, lumber, and them to be the through trade with European sailors, canoes to acquire buffalo hides/ best canoes they occurred as early as the 1790s and meat, kouse (lomatiums like biscuit had ever seen. again in the early 1800s. The ravages root), pipe-stone, feathers, and after © Edward S. Curtis of disease left the village here a 1730, horses from the plains; shells composite of epidemic survivors from (especially dentalium), and dried up and down river reflecting only a clams came to them from Puget semblance of their formerly great Sound and the coast; copper from Chinook culture. Alaska; iron axes from Siberia (via Even today, the Aleutians in the 1400-1500s); and Chinook intricate wood obsidian, wocas (water lily seeds), Civilization carving is an baskets, and slaves from as far south expression of as the Klamath Basin. Interior of a Chinook culture. Chinook lodge Natalie Behring, When Europeans sailed into the after a painting The Columbian mouth of the Columbia, the Chinook by Paul Kane quickly monopolized any new trade circa 1841. Note goods they offered. Briefly, they grew the dog. even more influential and wealthy, but the Europeans also brought diseases Oregon Historical Society Historical Oregon for which the Chinook had no natural Anthropologists and historians once immunity. (Opposite page) claimed that civilization arrived Paul Kane alongside complex systems of painted this agriculture. Only farming provided scene of Chinook a consistent food supply to support in front of Mt. large populations with social Hood from stratification and the leisure time to field sketches. create works of art. They were wrong. This is likely a The Chinook civilization arrived temporary house without plows or domestic livestock. as the Chinook There is a reason the word Chinook built permanent refers to both a people and a fish. This dwellings of great civilization was inextricably tied cedar planks. to Columbia’s salmon runs. National Gallery of Canada Galleryof National The Columbian The Columbian The Behring, Natalie Lewis & Clark On October 29, 1805, the Corps of This is the kind Clark wrote that Drano Lake was visit Drano Lake Discovery made camp here near of doorway Lewis filled with a “great number” of three Chinook plank houses on the & Clark barged tundra swans. Perhaps the lake once south side of Drano Lake. Evidence through. supported the wetland plant known of Chinook culture greeted the Zachary Kaufman, as wapato which is ideal swan food.