From both West Linn and Oregon City, you can see views of Willamette Falls, which was of major importance to Native peoples in history (the drawing below is from 1842), and is still a fishing site for them today.
The Clackamas band of the Kalapuya and other Kalapuya bands came here to harvest lamprey, salmon, sturgeon, and other fish. It was also a major trading site, as was the Celilo Falls further up the Columbia. The Kalapuya and Chinook often traveled back and forth between the Columbia and Willamette Rivers to trade.
The falls are the largest falls in the Pacific Northwest by volume, and the seventeenth widest in the world. Today, tribes from the Warm Springs and Grand Ronde reservations still fish here. Their importance in the lifeways of Native peoples is hardly captured by the historical sign at the Oregon City viewpoint:
To settlers, the falls seemed first and foremost to be a potential source of power. A power station was built there in 1888, and a 14-mile transmission line to Portland followed in 1889. Locks were built, and paper plants dominated the falls starting as early as 1866. The old Blue Heron paper plant is now closed, and is deteriorating, while the Clackamas County officials are trying to figure out what to do with it.
These pictures are from the Oregon City side from McLoughlin* Avenue, except for the first view, which is from the West Linn side, along the I-205 freeway at mile 7.5.
John McLoughlin's name is all over Oregon history: he is a "founding" father in settler history. In 1829, he established a land claim at the falls in the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, his employer. His bust is at the Oregon City falls viewpoint.
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