Ainsworth – Bonneville Dam

October, 2018

I woke up in my little trailer this morning to some clouds, some sun, and absolutely no rain … yay!

So I jumped in the big white truck and off I went for a tour of the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River.  I wanted to see how it was built, how it held back the water, and I wanted to see everything else about it.  (By the way, Bonneville is pronounced Bon-uh-ville.)

The aerial photo below shows the facility and how it is situated on the Columbia River.  The State of Washington (north) is on the left … the State of Oregon (south) is on the right.

All that white water in the middle is coming through the spillway/dam.  To the left of the dam is the new 1981 powerhouse.  To the right of the dam is the old 1938 powerhouse.  Both powerhouses produce electricity.  The locks, that allow boats and ships to navigate past the dam, are on the very far right in the photo above.  There is an older set of locks on site but they have been decommissioned.  There are two visitor’s centers on site for people to visit and two fish ladders on the property for trout, salmon, and sturgeon.

I was approaching the Bonneville facility from upriver, on the Washington side, when I noticed the boat in the photo below.  It too was headed towards Bonneville and was surely heading for the locks.  Hey, if I hurry, maybe I can get to the locks and watch this boat go through the locks!

But then I realized that, since I was on the Washington side, I couldn’t quickly get to the locks.  The locks are accessible by the public only from the Oregon side.  You can’t drive across the dam.  Damn! 🙂  So I slowed down, but I kept my eye on that boat anyway.

Just a couple of minutes later, I spied a dirt trail by the side of the road that I was on that led down to the edge of the river.   So I pulled over and took off on foot down that trail.  I found a perfect vantage point from which to snap a few photos of the boat.

BLUEBELL, is a 100-foot U. S. Coast Guard buoy tender, built in 1945.  She is the second oldest cutter in the U. S. Coast Guard, and the oldest one west of the Mississippi River.  There are lots of buoys and other navigation markers on the Columbia River (which runs all the way up to Canada) and on the Snake River (a major tributary of the Columbia) and other rivers too.  The BLUEBELL is a busy ship.

 

In the photo above, BLUEBELL is just a few minutes away from the Bonneville Locks, which are hidden from my view because of an intervening island, so the boat is just about to disappear from my view.  Notice the fishing platform used by Native Americans in the lower left corner of the photo above.

I jump back in my truck and head on down the road.

Just past the Bonneville facility, I pulled off the highway and took the two photos below.  I was looking back upriver at the dam in both photos.

 

I was here in early October, when there wasn’t much need to allow a great deal of water to flow through the spillway.  The photo below, which I found on the internet, was taken in early summer when the spring thaw run-off meant LOTS of water had to pass through those spillway gates in order to keep the water level constant behind the spillway/dam.

Again, back in the truck and on down the river westward.  Eventually, I crossed the river from Washington into Oregon, then headed back along the Oregon side and back to Bonneville.

While taking the two photos below, I was standing in Oregon while looking at the Bonneville facility, particularly the very end of the island in the river that’s closest to the Oregon side of the river.  The locks are immediately to my right.

 

The signs seemed a bit confusing to me.  One sign says “No Boats” and the other sign says “Lock” and points the way for boats to go.  One sign says NO and the other sign says GO.  I guess people who get this far upriver in a boat must know what they are supposed to do.

And the signs seemed so small.  I was using a LONG telephoto lens to take these photos.

Hey, Ann, let’s get into Bonneville … let’s go see what we can see!

Ok! 🙂

I drove to the entrance which had a large gate, a guard shack, and an armed guard.  He asked me several questions about several things including firearms and other weapons, and whether I had fuel or any other explosives in the truck except for the fuel in the truck’s fuel tank.  I said no sir.  He continued to ask a few questions and chat with me while he obviously watched his computer finishing its tasks, likely researching my truck’s license plate number.  In a few minutes, the guard smiled and waved me on saying “have a great time!”

I immediately drove back down to the end of that first island, the one that had those wacko boat direction signs on it and discovered the signs were huge!  That blue-and-white one was at least 12 feet tall.

If you look really closely in the photo above, you’ll see Little Towhee sitting in the bushes in the lower right corner.  That bird is so curious about everything!

Then I walked along the edge of that island towards the locks, as close to the edge as I could get (the sides were a bit steep and full of brambles).  I was on the downriver side of the locks.

 

The lock doors are huge.  Each door is 43 feet wide (86 feet in width total) and they are each 80 feet tall.

You may have noticed the roadway/bridge that appears to block the lock doors in the photos above.  That roadway is actually a swing bridge that opens when a vessel comes through that is too tall to fit beneath the roadway.  The photo below is from the internet and shows the swing bridge opening, with the lock doors already open just behind the swing bridge, so the boat in the photo below can come on into the lock.

 

 

After that adventure, I walked back to the truck that I’d left at the end of the island and then drove over to the next island, to the Visitor’s Center.  I assumed there would be a separate bridge for the public to use to get over there, but no, the only road was the one in the photos below … smack dab adjacent to the old powerhouse.  No wonder that guard asked so many questions.

 

I could hear the hum and feel the vibration of the powerhouse as I drove this road.

One of the fish ladders, above, photo taken from the internet.

I saw LOTS of stuff and had a great time.  Unfortunately, because it was October and off-season or maybe because it was Tuesday, I don’t know, but the Visitor’s Center was closed, public access to the fish ladders was closed, the usual tour of the old powerhouse was not available, and (what hurt the most) public foot traffic access to the locks was also shut down.  I was disappointed, but I certainly did see a lot of interesting things and I learned a great deal.  I learned that everything here is open from Memorial Day through Labor Day.  I’ll be back!

For lots more great information about Bonneville Lock and Dam facilities, go HERE and HERE and HERE.