Just for kids

A fly fisherman fights a trout near Buhl, Idaho.

The Snake River: It's more than just scenery

The Snake River is one of the most important rivers in the West. It is also one of the longest, flowing 1,000 miles from Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The river crosses all of Idaho and part of Eastern Washington before it dumps into the Columbia River at the Tri-Cities.

Along the way, it spills over a 212-foot cliff called Shoshone Falls, a natural wonder so magnificent it is often called the Niagara of the West. Nearby, the Snake is fed by a giant underground lake that collects water from thousands of square miles.

Because the Snake River is so large, it is used by many people in many ways. In fact, if everybody who wanted to take water from the river were allowed to, there wouldn't be any river left. It would all be gone.

Its water has many uses.

In Wyoming, the Snake turns from a gentle stream to a boiling river when it flows through a rock-filled canyon. Every summer, about 180,000 tourists float its white-water rapids in canoes or kayaks.

With that many visitors, the Snake Canyon is one of the most popular rafting spots in the West, along with the Deschutes River in Oregon, the South Fork of the American River in California, and the Arkansas in Colorado.

Its water also is used by farmers to grow famous Idaho potatoes. Idaho farmers grow more spuds than farmers in any other state. The people of Idaho are so proud of their brown tuber that for years, their license plates proclaimed Idaho grew "Famous Potatoes."

Potatoes can't grow without water, and it doesn't rain very much in Idaho. In Twin Falls, for example, it rains less than 10 inches a year, similar to the Tri-Cities.

More than 100 years ago, Idaho settlers realized they could take water from the Snake River and pump it across their land to grow crops. Before long, the federal government started building dams that slowed down the river enough to store water for irrigators in giant lakes.

Growing vegetables in the desert was so incredible that people named the place "Magic Valley." Congress even created a government agency to help pioneers settle the desert West and gave it lots of money. Today, the river passes more than a dozen major dams, including four between Pasco and Lewiston.

Besides providing irrigation water, the dams turn the power of falling water into electricity that lights homes for hundreds of miles around. Almost all of Idaho runs on "hydropower," a cheap and clean energy source generated by the Snake River.

Some dams do another important job for people who live in the Snake's wide valley. They control floods by storing water and releasing it slowly. In the spring, the Snake can be so full of water that it's fast and very dangerous. Because of that, early explorers called it the Mad River.

Dams also make lakes where thousands of migrating birds stop for a rest on their long flights.

But there is a problem with dams - and some people want to take out the four on the lower Snake River to make life easier for fish.

Despite all the good dams do, they make it difficult for salmon to swim from streams where they are born to the ocean and back. Salmon are a very important part of the Northwest, and a species that many other animals depend on for food.

Many devices are being used to make the trip for fish easier, but some salmon species are dwindling toward extinction anyway.

One way the government tries to help the baby fish is by catching thousands of them and putting them into boats that float down the Snake and Columbia rivers past the dams. Then, the boats dump out the young fish into the Columbia River near the Pacific Ocean.

Other kinds of boats also float on the Snake River. Thousands of wheat farmers, for instance, send their grain to Portland on large flat boats called barges. They are a cheaper way to ship the wheat than the alternatives, which are trains and trucks. From Portland, the grain is shipped all over the world.

Barges depend on dams. If dams didn't plug the Snake River and create pools of deep water, barges would crash on the rocks.

Another type of boat also is common on the Snake - fishing boats. Many fishermen visit the river to catch salmon, steelhead, bass and trout.

One popular spot to fish is in Hells Canyon, where the Snake River forms the Idaho-Oregon border.

Hells Canyon is the deepest gorge in North America, even deeper than the Grand Canyon. It is very remote and hard to drive to because of all the mountains nearby, but it is rugged and beautiful.

With all the different people using the Snake River, there's often disagreements:

-- River boaters want water in the river when farmers need to store it in reservoirs.

-- Fish need water that power companies would like to use to produce power and potato farmers would like to put on their crops.

-- Wheat farmers want to keep dams that slow down fish.

Even if these people never agree about how to operate the Snake, many can agree that it is one of the most valuable rivers in the West.