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Eagle Creek's Waterfalls!
Eagle Creek's Waterfalls!
There are three prominent waterfalls on Eagle Creek:
The Lower Falls (three stepped pools and rises, also known as Dwyer Falls) is 7’-6” tall, at about river mile 5, and has historically been passable at all but very low and high flows by migrating adult fish that would proceed farther upstream within Eagle Creek, or into North Fork Eagle and Delph creeks. Despite this history of demonstrated natural success, the first attempt at building a fish ladder was in 1940, to “assist” fish passage up to the Delph Creek Station (the first fish hatchery in the watershed built in 1922 (closed in 1954) by the Oregon Fish Commission – it was merely a series of primitive steps blasted out of the bedrock along the left bank (when viewed looking downstream), which soon began to erode away. An improved concrete ladder was constructed in 1957 along the right bank to service the new Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery (ECNFH) farther upstream. The 1957 ladder continues to be used today.
The 17 foot (+/-) tall Middle Falls, at about river mile 9.2 (just upstream of the Delph Creek confluence) is considered by fisheries biologists to be the historic, natural barrier to migrating fish. To surmount this, an inadequately-designed concrete fish ladder (the headwall was often overtopped and the ladder often plugged with logs) was constructed by the Oregon Fish Commission in the late 1940’s, which was subsequently improved in 1957 when the Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery (ECNFH) was built upstream. This ladder has since allowed salmonid migration up to the ECNFH.
At the ECNFH, fish are prevented from migrating any farther upstream within Eagle Creek due to the imposition of an electric weir and small ladder that guides fish into the hatchery. However, the 16 foot (+/-) tall Upper Falls, located about one quarter mile upstream of the ECNFH, at river mile 13.3, is also considered to be an impassible, or a nearly impassible barrier to migrating fish, and a fish ladder has never been constructed at the upper falls. The question that arose among anglers in the early 1950’s was, “To further expand salmonid habitat, why wasn’t a ladder constructed at this falls as well, since they had been built at the lower and middle falls?” A feasibility study to answer this question was conducted in 1952 by the Oregon Fish Commission, which concluded, “… due to the lack of abundant spawning areas in sufficient quantities it is not recommended for construction.” The concrete works and 5'-0" diameter penstock (pipe) on the left side of the photo are part of an abandoned microhydrolectric facility.
To summarize, anadromous fish today are able to freely migrate from Eagle Creek’s confluence with the Clackamas River up to the Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery as well as into Delph and the North Fork Eagle creeks and their tributaries. The South Fork of Eagle Creek and that portion of Eagle Creek within the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness is inaccessible to salmonids due to the fish hatchery’s electric weir (since 1957) and the Upper Falls (for millennia). There are NO manmade obstructions to prevent fish migration from Eagle Creek to the Pacific Ocean.