In the early 1900s, lush evergreen forests covered the rugged mountains on either side of the Columbia River, providing fuel and building material. In this steep, wet country, water served as an ideal conveyance, and sawmills stood in the forest several miles from the river, where massive logs were cut into beams called cants and sent through water-filled flumes by gravity to a finishing mill below at the riverside. Across Drano Lake, the ruins of the Broughton Lumber Company's flume remain; built in 1923, it transported lumber until the firm closed its inland mill at Willard in 1986. Columbia River salmon once returned from the ocean to spawn in such numbers that settlers arriving in the 1840s scarcely believed their eyes, but habitat destruction and increased commercial harvest to supply canneries along the river quickly depleted those runs, and within fifty years salmon populations dwindled. The Little White Salmon National Fish Hatchery, established in 1896 to rebuild salmon runs, still operates and is open for public viewing on the northwest side of Drano Lake.