Celilo Falls

Celilo Falls was a powerful complex of cascades, narrows, and rapids on the Columbia River at the present-day Oregon-Washington border, once the largest waterfall in North America by flow rate. For roughly 15,000 years, known as Wyam, it was one of the continent’s most important Indigenous fishing and trading places, where villages linked the Pacific Plateau with distant regions and immense salmon runs sustained Native communities. Long dangerous for river travel, the site was later bypassed by the Celilo Canal in 1915. In 1957, waters backed up by The Dalles Dam submerged the falls, nearby settlements, and fishing platforms, though its cultural significance endures.

Washington · United States