A child's leaf raft drifts along a serene stretch of the Snake River near Flagg Ranch, Wyo., more than 1,000 river miles from Pasco.

River's tale winds long, rocky course

FLAGG RANCH, Wyo. - One thousand river miles from Pasco, a glassy strip of the Snake River gently curves into Jackson Lake.

Just upstream, kids romp in late-summer shallows as the fading sun silhouettes the jagged peaks of the Tetons, the knifelike bicuspids of the Rocky Mountains.

After five days, four states and more than a dozen interviews, the search for the Snake ends here with a whimsical craft.

The peculiar raft plies waters that are burning red with sunset's glow. It's the product of a child's fantasy, a tiny bit of bark under way on the strength of a stiff green leaf sail.

The scene it creates captures the essence of one of the West's great rivers - human imagination set free on the timeless, boundless forces of nature.

Once these waters reach Jackson Lake, they become part of a vast and intricate system downstream: More than a dozen large hydropower dams, some 3.3 million acres of irrigated farmland and slack-water reservoirs that draw hundreds of thousands of tourists to fish or play.

The basic story is simple: In the early 1800s, Europeans discovered a river that stretched from the Continental Divide to the Columbia River, which ran another 330 miles to the Pacific Ocean.

Early woodsmen called it the Mad River in deference to the massive spring surges of snow melt that swelled its waters and made them perilous to cross.

Eventually, however, the river became known widely as the Snake, thanks to the Shoshone Indians. As one version of the story goes, the Shoshones made an S-shaped sign with their hands to mimic swimming salmon - a sign that reminded European minds of a snake.

By the 1880s, a family in south-central Idaho was irrigating almost 200 acres from the Snake, drawing interest from the federal government to one of the continent's longest rivers.

In 1902, Congress created the Reclamation Service to control and spread the benefits of the waters of the West. Irrigation grew quickly along the Snake, along with power-generating dams, flood control, recreation and, in the 1970s, navigation locks on the final lower Snake dams that made Lewiston the West Coast's farthest inland sea port.

Billions of dollars were made, millions of people were fed by the cultivated desert and hundreds of thousands of homes were heated.

All the while, the Snake's once-prodigious runs of salmon failed. Slowly, their river was traded for just one more dam and one more bucket of water - one more reach of the inexorable human hand.

That's how Idaho's vast expanse of pristine forest and federally designated wild and scenic rivers came today to be virtually devoid of wild salmon.

And that's why today the Northwest's big argument - the one that has even become a presidential campaign issue - is whether the four Snake dams between Pasco and Lewiston should be removed to try to reverse some of the damage inflicted by the ever-increasing demands of progress.

So myopic is the Mid-Columbia debate when it comes to river issues that little besides the dams is mentioned about the Snake these days.

But this river has a much bigger story. Along its winding course, many lives are intertwined with the river:

A dam tender who unleashes the Snake River from Jackson Lake each spring, sometimes with a manual crank.

A riverman who pioneered the white water industry on the upper Snake while trying to find himself.

A farmer and would-be politician whose Snake-watered barley goes to Budweiser and whose potatoes help fill frozen TV dinners.

A retired Idaho fisheries agent who watched the salmon runs wink out.

The vice president of the world's largest trout farm, just downstream of where the last drops of water are extracted from the river for irrigation.

And a power-lineman-turned-custom-fly-rod-maker whose fine poles have been sold to Hollywood stars and former presidents.

But this story starts in Colfax, where Palouse wheat growers are assessing this year's harvest and wondering along with the rest of the nation what is to become of the impounded Snake River - their lifeline to the world.