There used to be salmon as big as golden retrievers in the Columbia River, but dams killed them off
If you cast a fishing line into the Columbia River in 1920, you’d better be ready for a fight. The Pacific Northwest was once home to an enormous strain of Chinook salmon, with specimens weighing 70 to 80 pounds — reaching as high as 125. These earned a hefty moniker: they were called “June hogs,” signifying both their size and the season to catch them.
Before the arrival of settlers, Native Americans lived off the salmon supply of the Columbia River Basin for thousands of years. According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, “For millennia, mid-Columbia tribes who caught the fish at Celilo Falls used them for food but also for spiritual, ceremonial, and trade purposes.” On his expedition, William Clark described indigenous populations who took advantage of an abundant and ready food source. “The number of dead Salmon on the Shores & floating in the river is incredible,” he wrote on October 17, 1805. “At this season they have only to collect the fish, split them open, and dry them on their Scaffolds on which they have great numbers.”
http://timeline.com/there-used-to-b...a-river-but-dams-killed-them-off-20854d1f971e
If you cast a fishing line into the Columbia River in 1920, you’d better be ready for a fight. The Pacific Northwest was once home to an enormous strain of Chinook salmon, with specimens weighing 70 to 80 pounds — reaching as high as 125. These earned a hefty moniker: they were called “June hogs,” signifying both their size and the season to catch them.
Before the arrival of settlers, Native Americans lived off the salmon supply of the Columbia River Basin for thousands of years. According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, “For millennia, mid-Columbia tribes who caught the fish at Celilo Falls used them for food but also for spiritual, ceremonial, and trade purposes.” On his expedition, William Clark described indigenous populations who took advantage of an abundant and ready food source. “The number of dead Salmon on the Shores & floating in the river is incredible,” he wrote on October 17, 1805. “At this season they have only to collect the fish, split them open, and dry them on their Scaffolds on which they have great numbers.”
http://timeline.com/there-used-to-b...a-river-but-dams-killed-them-off-20854d1f971e
