After nearly two decades of local and national battles, the last of four dams on Oregon’s Klamath River were dismantled, returning the river to its natural state. Not only have native salmon (and bears) returned to the freshly flowing river, but it’s created new opportunities for fishing and rafting. Frequent visitor Bill Fink returns to the Klamath to be among the first to try the new trips.
“No humans have gathered on this shore in more than 100 years,” says our rafting guide Will Volpert as we paddle to a calm eddy on the Klamath River in northern California. We unload on rocky riverside into an idyllic copse—the clearing is ringed with young trees bursting with fresh green branches amid a tangle of undergrowth, surrounded by towering cliffs scattered with birds’ nests. Almost on cue, a bald eagle circles above, curious about these new visitors.
I’m on the first commercial rafting trip down the Kickacéki Canyon, on two rafts with 10 travelers and guides from two companies paddling from the Oregon border into California. It’s a rare landscape, a watershed reborn after more than a century buried beneath the massive weight of 45 billion gallons of reservoir water—and the metaphoric weight of generations of Western industrial development.
But in 2024, the last of four dams along the river was removed to drain the reservoirs and return the river to its original pathway.
It’s not often, or ever, really, that a person these days can explore new territory in the mainland United States. How we came to be here paddling on this day trip down the ‘New Klamath’ is a story decades in the making, one that shows off a rare victory for environmental and Native cultural groups over the interests of big business and the concrete barriers of government inertia.
“Oh this is going to be SPICY,” shouts Ben Limahai, guide at Noah’s River Adventures which leads tours on the newly opened river sections, as our raft rides through quickening river flow into a section of whitewater. This canyon section is classified as ‘four plus’ in the industry-standard notation for the size and difficulty of rapids, ranked from one to a maximum of five.
Ben turns to his fellow guide working to steer the boat from the rocks and shouts, “Hey Big Sexy, you reckon we go river-left here?” The hard-paddling ‘Big Sexy’ Logan Wagner, in the tradition of ironic river nicknames, is actually a small, quiet guy. Logan grunts and tilts his head to the left to answer Ben, mumbling “It worked last time. Only second time I tried though.” Big Sexy gives a small grin of anticipation.
A dammed country seemed a perfect solution to energy and environmental management—a win-win solution for the American people, right? However, not everyone was a winner in this new dammed landscape.
On this afternoon adventure, everyone is learning about the new river, including the guides. It’s a huge difference from typical Klamath River trips in Southern Oregon where every boulder, branch and eddy has been mapped, named, and navigated from every possible angle. Even the flow of the Klamath between dams is coordinated with timed daily water releases.
We’re in little danger with our professional guides, but one raft does get stuck on a rock for a few minutes as a new route proves to be “a little too chunky,” in their comical river code.
When the river widens and slows to a gentle flow, our group stops for photos and a quick swim in the chilly waters—the cold shock reminding us why we were wearing wetsuits. We share friendly taunts daring each other to climb the rocks on the other side for some low-level cliff diving, but nobody takes the bait, content to just splash around a bit.
As we hop back on the rafts and float down the mellow part of the river, we lean back and appreciate the scenery around us, breezes rustling tree branches, song birds flitting among the riverside reeds. Rock faces along the river display funky geometric stone patterns almost mirroring the swirls of the river rapids, a vivid lesson on plate tectonics and geology. And we witness the man-made tectonic shifts of dam removal as we pass first one, then another remnant of the dams. Rough segments of dirt and stone still remain at the dam junctions like the eroded walls of a giant kid’s abandoned sand castle washed away by the tide.
It’s hard to believe this lively river path and all the life around it was as much as 75 feet (23 meters) below the surface of a calm reservoir just two years ago. In fact, the river route has yet to appear on Google Maps, which, like road signs in the region, still declares Copco Lake to cover the area.
“We knew it was going to happen [the dam removal], but didn’t realize just how spectacular it was going to be,” says Volpert, who guides and co-owns Indigo Creek Outfitters, the other rafting company on our trip.
Expecting to see a wasteland of ghostly tree stumps and a century of trash in the recently exposed territory, I’m surprised to float by fields of bright orange California poppies, small forests of thin trees and bushes, and even spot a deer nibbling at fresh seedlings.
“I even saw a bear here earlier this spring,” says Volpert, “which means the salmon are back big time. It’s really amazing.”
But this revived river paradise didn’t just happen on its own, the rebirth was the effort of many groups over decades—with plenty of work yet to come.
In the early part of the 20th century, America was dam-crazy, building dam-powered hydroelectric generators in rivers across the Western states, from the monumental Hoover Dam outside of Las Vegas, to dozens of dams corking rivers all over Oregon and California. From 1907 to 1925, four dams were built along the upper Klamath river, creating Copco Lake and other reservoirs. Concrete Copco 1 dam towered more than 120 feet (37 meters) high and 450 feet (137 meters) long.
The hydroelectric systems like those on the Klamath were a boon to newly developing towns, supplying essential electricity and powering factories, providing jobs for thousands of people across the west. The dams helped prevent flooding via carefully timed water releases, which also provided dependable irrigation for farmers, while the sustainable, clean resource of water power avoided pollution. The large new reservoirs also provided a recreation area for fishers and boaters. A dammed country seemed a perfect solution to energy and environmental management—a win-win solution for the American people, right?
However, not everyone was a winner in this new dammed landscape.
“Everything we’ve done here is unprecedented. We’re essentially a template for the rest of the country to follow.”
- Bart Baldwin, owner, Noah’s River Adventures
Native American tribes who have lived for centuries in the watershed were displaced by the projects, continuing a generations-long upheaval from traditional lands. In the Klamath valleys, hilltops long considered sacred ground became submerged far beneath the reservoir surface.
Non-human natives of the watershed also suffered as a result of the dams. Salmon runs, the annual spawning journey of the plucky fish swimming upriver from the ocean to mate and lay eggs far upstream on the Klamath, became blocked by the huge concrete dams. To help them, concerned environmentalists and fishing interests constructed ‘salmon ladders’ beside the dams, small water-filled bypasses to allow the fish to swim around the dams to their traditional spawning area.
But the ladders proved to be an insufficient workaround. Salmon numbers dropped precipitously, culminating in a massive die-off in 2002 when tens of thousands of salmon on the Klamath perished in the shadows of the dams. This die-off sparked the first movement to suggest dam removal.
The initial efforts of tribal and environmental groups did little to change the dams’ status quo. Resistance from those with vested interests including power companies, agricultural firms, and lake vacationers, stymied early efforts. It took nearly two decades of coordinated work among diverse communities to spur the dam removal.
Native American tribal groups campaigned for a return of their traditional homelands. Environmental groups publicized the impact on salmon and the ecosystem that depended on the salmon. Tour operators shared the positive impact of expanded rafting along the river. Engineers showed how the river flow could still be managed with remaining dams to provide irrigation needs and prevent floods.
And most importantly, available energy sources were more than enough to make up for the increasingly outdated systems of the century-old dams. Once consensus was reached, the actual dam removal proceeded surprisingly quickly. It took less than a year.
Upon the final dam’s removal, Klamath Tribes Chairman William Ray, Jr. released a statement. It said, “Today, for The Klamath Tribes, marks another culturally significant accomplishment with the breaching of the JC Boyle Dam, which helps further the eventual return of the c’iyaal’s (salmon), taken away from the Tribes in 1907.”
Following the water release, volunteers and contracted environmental firms cleared lake-bottom trash and tree stumps, then spread a staggering 17 billion seeds of 90 different native plants including poppies and acorns across the watershed, according to a report from regional media outlet The Source. Even helicopters were used to drop seeds onto muddy flats inaccessible by vehicles and hikers.
But dam removal doesn’t mean the project is done. In fact, the efforts and effects of river and cultural ecosystem revival are just beginning. “Everything we’ve done here is unprecedented,” says Bart Baldwin, owner of Noah’s River Adventures. “We’re essentially a template for the rest of the country to follow. There’s a lot of pressure not to screw this up.”
Ongoing efforts of the river revival include continued plantings, erosion management and the construction of new riverside rest stops and entry points—enabling visitors to put in above or below the rapids to tailor their rafting experience to be as calm or bouncy as they’d like. Former lakeside homes and shops are being reimagined as riverside features, albeit with a longer walk down to the water. Questions remain about the ownership and management of the newly-exposed reservoir-bottom lands, with discussions between state, county, corporate and Indigenous groups continuing to happen.
As my rafting adventure demonstrated, and as the dozens of trips after ours have proved, many positive effects of dam removal are already vividly clear, demonstrating the capability of diverse Native, recreational, environmental and business efforts to cooperate for a common cause. The river’s rebirth is a powerful (and ‘spicy’ and ‘chunky’) example for the rest of the nation with Kickacéki Canyon once again alive and well.
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From biking the backroads of the Philippines to sipping cognac in French chateaus, Bill Fink's global adventures have appeared in over 50 outlets, including National Geographic Traveler, AFAR, Frommer’s and BBC Travel.
