Welcome to the web home of the Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation
Willamette Falls is a large, horseshoe-shaped basalt cascade that divides the upper and lower reaches of the Willamette River. which is an American Heritage River. The falls lie 14 miles upriver from Portland by car and more than 20 river-miles. They were the heart of pioneering industry in the Oregon Territory.
LockFest2010
Lock Fest 2010
May 15
What: More than a thousand visitors enjoyed a gorgeous sunny day at our family-friendly history festival, celebrating the 2010 reopening of 137-year-old Willamette Falls Navigation Canal and Locks and the 95th year of Corps of Engineers stewardship and operations of the canal. The crowd was particularly interested in the two commercial cargoes that locked through: 150 tons of scrap steel from Schnitzer Steel, in Portland, heading for a recycling center/rolling mill in McMinnville; and a barge of sand. (See photo)
Support WFHF with your purchase of Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation's gift items for history and art lovers.
The holiday season, a birthday or anytime is a great time to share heritage projects developed and offered by the Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation.
Our oral history DVDs profile seventeen workers from the Crown Zellerbach paper mill in West Linn. Their grim, funny and heart-warming stories fill both documentaries:
"Grindstones, Boomsticks, Tattletales and Nips: the stories and the people of Crown Zellerbach International, West Linn Division--1928-1986" (2 hrs.), and,
"Friends, Fish and $1.09 an Hour." (1 hr.)
Posters featuring the art of Oregon's own Daniel Robinson celebrate and raise funding for each year's Lock Fest.