Grande Ronde River

The Grande Ronde's source is an alpine meadow in southern Union County, Oregon, west of Anthony Lakes and the Anthony Lakes Ski Area, about above sea level. The headwaters are in the Elkhorn Mountains, a sub-range of the Blue Mountains. It then flows through Red Bridge and Hilgard Junction state parks, passing through a narrow canyon before entering the Grande Ronde Valley at the city of La Grande. The Grande Ronde Valley, measuring about from north to south and up to from east to west, consists mostly of irrigated farmland and also includes the communities of Union, Cove, Imbler and Summerville. At the end of the ditch the original channel – which now carries water from Catherine Creek– rejoins from the right. Below Elgin, the Grande Ronde enters a series of deep, winding canyons for the remaining of its course to the Snake River. It receives Lookingglass Creek from the left then crosses into Wallowa County at Rondowa, where it is joined from the right by its largest tributary, the Wallowa River. Entering the Umatilla National Forest, it turns east, receiving Bear and Elbow Creeks from the left and Wildcat, Mud and Courtney Creeks from the right, then the Wenaha River from the left at the settlement of Troy. From Troy, the terrain around the river becomes more open, with forests giving way to grassy ridges and rangeland. The stretch between the Wallowa River confluence and Wildcat Creek is inaccessible by road. Below here, the river cuts through progressively more arid, sparsely vegetated landscapes with large areas of exposed rock. Discharge By discharge, the Grande Ronde is the third largest tributary of the Snake River. Although water is diverted off the upper river for irrigation, water consumption in the Grande Ronde Valley represents only about 9 percent of its flow at the mouth, and with no large dams regulating its flow, the Grande Ronde runs high with spring snowmelt and reaches its lowest level in the fall. At Elgin, the average discharge was for the period 1955–1981, from a drainage area of , or 30 percent of the entire watershed. ==Watershed==

The Grande Ronde River's watershed is located mostly in Union and Wallowa Counties in Oregon and Asotin County in Washington, with small parts extending into Umatilla County, Oregon and Columbia and Garfield counties in Washington. The Blue Mountains, mostly rising to about , form the western boundary of the watershed as they extend through northeast Oregon and southeast Washington. East of the Grande Ronde Valley are the Wallowa Mountains, whose highest peaks reach almost . The Wallowa Valley, the second major mountain valley in the Grande Ronde watershed, is situated just north of the Wallowa Mountains; the Wallowa River drains this area into the Grande Ronde. The northeastern part of the Grande Ronde watershed, north of the Wallowa Valley and west of Hells Canyon, is defined by extensive flat-topped plateaus through which the river and its tributaries have cut canyons, creating a dissected plateau. Most of the river's The largest city is La Grande, which as of the 2020 census had a population of 13,026. Other major towns include Union (2,152) in the southern Grande Ronde Valley, and Enterprise (2,052) in the Wallowa Valley. About 46 percent of the watershed is public land, managed primarily by the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Most of the Wallowa Mountains, and the Grande Ronde's headwaters in the Elkhorn Mountains, are in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. The Blue Mountains to the north are mostly in the Umatilla National Forest. The Grande Ronde watershed experiences a continental climate with warm, dry summers and cold, moderately snowy winters. Mean temperatures range from a daily minimum in January to a daily maximum of in July. Annual precipitation ranges from in the valleys to at higher elevations. Most precipitation in the Grande Ronde watershed falls as snow. Due to the lower elevation of the Blue Mountains, snowmelt occurs earlier in the upper Grande Ronde drainage, typically peaking in March or April; the Wallowa River, by contrast, peaks in May or June. The Grande Ronde watershed is bordered by several other watersheds of the Columbia River basin. To the west are the watersheds of the Walla Walla, Umatilla and John Day Rivers, which all flow directly into the Columbia River. The Tucannon River and Asotin Creek to the north, the Imnaha River to the east, and the Powder River to the south are all tributaries of the Snake River. ==Geology==

The Grande Ronde River basin is founded on multiple terranes, or crustal fragments, that accreted onto the North American continent during the Mesozoic 248–65 million years ago (Ma). At that time, the area was still part of a shallow inland sea. About 160–100 Ma, multiple igneous plutons intruded into the crust beneath this area, the largest of which would eventually form the Wallowa Mountains as the region experienced tectonic uplift that raised the land above sea level. The ancestral topography and drainage patterns were completely altered between 17–6 Ma with the eruption of the Columbia River basalts, a series of massive flood basalt events that engulfed much of eastern Washington and Oregon in the region now known as the Columbia Plateau. The Grande Ronde basalt sub-group erupted between 17 and 15.5 Ma and accounts for more than 80 percent of the total volume of the flows. By 10 Ma the area had begun to drain northeast down an ancestral Grande Ronde river channel. ==History==

Indigenous peoples The lower Grande Ronde watershed downstream of the Grande Ronde Valley was once within the territory of the Nez Perce. The Grande Ronde Valley itself was a major rendezvous site for the Nez Perce and tribes west of the Blue Mountains such as the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla. The valley was a place to trade and peacefully settle disputes, as well as to fish, bathe in hot springs, and bring the elderly and sick to recuperate. People came to the Grande Ronde region via an extensive network of trails that laced the Blue Mountains. Trails connected the Grande Ronde Valley southeast to the Baker Valley, west to the Umatilla River valley, and north to the Walla Walla Valley. The Nez Perce and Cayuse called the upper section of the Grande Ronde Qapqápnim Wéele, meaning "cottonwood stream". The Nez Perce had several villages on the Grande Ronde below the Wenaha, including Híinezpu at the mouth of Bear Creek, and Qemúynem at the confluence with the Snake River. Exploration and settlement The Grande Ronde Valley was explored and named by fur trappers in the early 19th century. In 1811 the Pacific Fur Company chartered an expedition, led by Wilson Price Hunt, to find a passage from the upper Snake River to the Pacific Ocean. Finding Hells Canyon to be impassable for boats, the expedition followed Native American trails on an overland route through the Blue Mountains. French-Canadian fur trappers who subsequently visited the area dubbed it Grande Ronde, meaning "great circle", a name which was recorded by Peter Skene Ogden in 1827. Ogden also referred to the river as the "Clay River", the origin of which is not known. U.S. Army officer Benjamin Bonneville explored the lower Grande Ronde River on an 1834 expedition, after also failing to find a way down the Snake through Hells Canyon. Bonneville's party crossed the Wallowa Mountains and down Joseph Canyon to reach the Grande Ronde, recording the name "Way-lee-way". At the confluence they encountered the winter camp of Chief Tuekakas and the Wallowa Nez Perce. Bonneville also called the river Fourche de Glace, "river of ice". Moses "Black" Harris led the first wagon train through the Grande Ronde Valley in 1844. The fertile, well-watered valley, with its grasslands offering rich forage for animals, was a welcome respite after traveling through the deserts of eastern Oregon and Idaho. Native Americans in the valley engaged in a lucrative trade of oxen, trading one healthy, well-fed animal for every two exhausted, starving ones. They let the oxen graze and fatten up in the valley before selling them to the next party of travelers. An estimated 300,000 emigrants traveled through the Grande Ronde Valley from the 1840s to the 1870s. The Walla Walla, Cayuse and Umatilla surrendered their lands in the upper Grande Ronde River in the 1855 Treaty of Walla Walla in exchange for the Umatilla Indian Reservation, although they "reserved their right to hunt, fish and gather at all usual and accustomed areas on and off the reservation." On July 17, 1856, a U.S. Army detachment led by Col. Benjamin F. Shaw killed fifty or sixty mostly unarmed Walla Walla, Umatilla and Cayuse near present-day Elgin, in what is now known as the Grande Ronde Massacre. This further inflamed tensions and led to the failure of peace talks in 1856. In 1862, settlers began homesteading in the Grande Ronde Valley and a group of Umatilla attempted to prevent them from claiming land. Soldiers sent to deal with the dispute ended up killing four Umatilla men, causing the rest of the group to flee. This brought an end to tribal resistance of settlement in the valley. The Nez Perce retained control of their lands along the lower Grande Ronde River in the 1855 treaty. However, gold strikes near Lewiston led to a flood of prospectors onto Nez Perce treaty lands in the 1860s. Some Nez Perce leaders were pressured into signing a second treaty that greatly shrank the size of their reservation, eliminating all the lands in Washington and Oregon, and thus the Grande Ronde watershed, from their use. Several Nez Perce bands, including that led by Chief Joseph, refused to leave their lands in northeast Oregon. Joseph's band held out in the Wallowa Valley until the Nez Perce War of 1877, when they were forced to flee ahead of the US Army's arrival. Later development The Grande Ronde Valley became well established as an agricultural center in the 1860s and 1870s, providing food to gold mining districts in Idaho to the east. Within a few years, farmers and ranchers had dug ditches, rerouted and channelized streams to drain the area's natural wetlands. Timber cut in the surrounding mountains was floated down the Grande Ronde and Catherine Creek to sawmills in the valley. between Elgin and Joseph. During the 1860s, gold prospecting from Lewiston soon extended up the Snake to the Grande Ronde's mouth, following rumors of a massive gold discovery on Shovel Creek, which flows into the Snake a short distance upstream from the Grande Ronde. By 1865 the Rogers brothers had established Rogersburg at the confluence of the Grande Ronde and Snake. Although the Rogers laid out the townsite with plans to sell lots, the town failed to grow because of the lack of road access. Steamboats on the Snake River were the primary means of transportation between Lewiston, the mouth of the Grande Ronde and points upstream. Mining traffic ceased in 1904, though boats started carrying passengers and mail again around 1910. The mouth of the Grande Ronde remained inaccessible by road until 1937. The forest reserve was established in order to settle land disputes between cattle and sheep ranchers, Although livestock is still one of the region's main industries, some parts of the Grande Ronde watershed have since been closed to grazing. In what would become the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness, grazing allotments were cancelled around 1965. A number of dams were proposed for the Grande Ronde throughout the 20th century, though none were built. In 1944 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation proposed several dams on the upper Grande Ronde and Catherine Creek in response to repeated flooding in the Grande Ronde Valley. Congress authorized the flood control dams in 1968, but they were delayed due to environmental concerns. After the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation sued in 1974, the dam projects were "indefinitely postponed". On October 28, 1988, the Grande Ronde was designated a Wild and Scenic River from the Wallowa River to near the Oregon–Washington border, making the section off limits to new dams. ==Ecology==

Fish The Grande Ronde River supports an estimated 38 fish species, of which 15 are introduced. Chinook salmon, steelhead and bull trout are federally listed as threatened species; Hatchery coho were reintroduced to the Grande Ronde watershed in 2017. Hatchery coho returns rebounded enough to permit coho retention in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The Grande Ronde River watershed has between of current or former salmon-bearing streams. In 1982 the Lookingglass Fish Hatchery was built to rear chinook salmon on Lookingglass Creek, a tributary of the Grande Ronde. The hatchery was one of several built throughout the Snake River system as part of the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan, to mitigate anadromous fish losses caused by dam projects. In 1992, the Northwest Power Planning Council organized the Grande Ronde Model Watershed (GRMW) project to develop a comprehensive management strategy for the Grande Ronde and adjacent Imnaha River watersheds. The GRMW is intended to foster cooperation between public agencies, private landowners, fisheries management and environmental interests. Funded primarily by the Bonneville Power Administration, it has coordinated hundreds of projects in the Grande Ronde River basin to conserve instream flows, remove fish passage barriers, mitigate erosion and restore riparian habitats. However, chinook salmon and steelhead returns have not increased substantially in the 1992–2023 period, due to the effects of the Snake and Columbia River dams on fish migration. Bull trout, once widely distributed in Oregon, now inhabit only a few streams due to the effects of logging, mining and agriculture. The Grande Ronde, Wenaha, and Wallowa Rivers and their tributaries host eleven surviving bull trout populations. Redband trout and Pacific lamprey are federally designated species of concern. Much of the Grande Ronde is also located within gray wolf range in Oregon. Union and Wallowa Counties each have eight known wolf packs. The range of four wolf packs in Washington also extends into or adjacent to the Grande Ronde watershed. The river bottoms also provide wintering habitat for bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer and bald eagles. Higher elevations transition into shrubland and eventually coniferous forest in the Blue and Wallowa Mountains. As elevation increases, principal tree species transition from ponderosa pine to Douglas-fir, grand fir, subalpine fir and mountain hemlock. ==Industries and economy==

Irrigation is the largest consumer of Grande Ronde River water. consuming of surface water and of groundwater each year. Municipal and industrial users consume about of combined surface and groundwater. While water flows in the Upper Grande Ronde River Basin typically peak in March and April, agricultural water demand is highest in June and July. Logging has been a major industry in the Grande Ronde watershed since settlement in the 1860s. A water-powered sawmill was first built on the river in 1862 at Oro Dell, just upstream of La Grande. In the mid-20th century, logging on federal (National Forest) lands increased greatly in both Union and Wallowa Counties, but the rate of harvest dropped off by the 1990s, with private industry making up the bulk of timber harvest in the 21st century. In 2004, about 118 million board feet were cut in Union and Wallowa Counties, compared to 200–300 million board feet per year in the 1960s–1980s. Although the river is no longer used for log transport, the effects of timber harvest continue to impact its tributaries. In many places, reduced forest canopy cover has elevated stream temperatures, to the detriment of cold-water fish such as trout and salmon. Since the 1970s, improved logging practices such as stream buffer zones have reduced the impact of timber harvest on the Grande Ronde. Early gold mining along the river's headwaters was followed by dredge mining in the 1930s and 1940s that deposited tailings along more than of the riverbed. The tailings buried the natural floodplain and forced the river into a constricted channel on the west side of the valley. Starting about 2010, the Forest Service has conducted restoration work along this reach. ==Recreation==

Several sections of the Grande Ronde and its tributaries are federally protected as National Wild and Scenic Rivers. The Wild and Scenic section of the Grande Ronde extends for from Rondowa, at the confluence of the Wallowa River, to the Oregon–Washington state line. The roadless stretch from Rondowa to Wildcat Creek is designated "Wild", and from there downstream is "Recreational". The entire main stem of the Wenaha River is protected, with the section in the Umatilla National Forest designated "Wild", and from there to Troy as "Scenic" and "Recreational". Parts of three other streams in the Grande Ronde watershed – the Minam River, Lostine River and Joseph Creek – also carry Wild and Scenic designations. The Grande Ronde River is considered one of the top recreational fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, particularly for steelhead/rainbow trout and chinook salmon. Steelhead fishing is typically best from September or October to early December, when water temperatures fall low enough to draw steelhead out of the Snake River. Only hatchery fish with clipped adipose fins may be kept. Because the 1855 Treaty of Walla Walla grants rights to Umatilla and Nez Perce subsistence fishing in the Grande Ronde River, the allowable harvest of fall chinook is apportioned evenly between the sport and subsistence fisheries. From this reach upstream to the Wallowa River confluence and down to the Snake River, the Grande Ronde is accessible only by boat. Fishing is often done from drift boats and rafts, and several private outfitters run multi-day floating trips on the river. chukar, partridge and quail are common in riverside and grassland areas, and turkey and grouse are common in the upland forested areas. Due to the lack of roads, many hunters use boats on the river to access remote areas. Bird hunting locations near the river include the Wenaha Wildlife Area around Troy, and parts of Ladd Marsh in the Grande Ronde Valley. The Grande Ronde has mostly beginner to intermediate level whitewater (class II-III), and is heavily used by rafters and kayakers. The Wallowa River at Minam is the main launching point for the Wild and Scenic section of the river. It usually takes 2–3 days to float the Wild and Scenic stretch from Minam to the Oregon–Washington border. Because the river is free-flowing, water levels can rise or fall quickly depending on precipitation and snowmelt. The most popular boating season is from about May to July. Before May, the river is typically running too high with spring melt, and by August water levels have fallen enough to expose numerous rocks and shoals. The Narrows, located about from the confluence with the Snake, is the only Class IV rapid on the Grande Ronde and is considered quite dangerous, especially at low water during which the river constricts into a small bedrock chute. All river trips require registering for a free permit from the Bureau of Land Management, which administers watercraft use of the river. ==See also==