Willamette Falls

It has been raining in Portland since the first of December. Most of us don’t mind this because we worry about California’s drought and we hope some of this water will trickle down (if you’ll excuse the expression) to them. We have had some floods, mudslides, and fallen trees, though nothing as devastating as the floods we’ve seen reported in northern England and southern Scotland which we know about from the blips of PaulaJ and her friends. 

On the weekend Sue and I set out to have a look at the raging waters at Willamette Falls, which according to the World Waterfall Database is the 17th largest waterfall in the world. We found that there is so much water in the Willamette River that the falls have almost filled up from the bottom so that at the moment they look rather shallow. You can definitely feel the power and weight of water at that junction. Since the 1880s, Willamette Falls have been used to power paper plants, however now most of those, including Blue Heron (foreground) are now failing, and there is a plan to demolish most of these ugly buildings (when? we don’t know) and build a park and boardwalk so that the falls may be harnessed for their tourism potential.

After we returned from our little adventure we heard from Sue’s brother on the Oregon coast that the road to his house has caved in as a result of the heavy rains. Sue’s niece and nephew are on their way home for Christmas, and they may have to get there by a circuitous route, literally over the mountain and through the woods to avoid the washed-out road.