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In the early
1980s, I was involved in a student effort to designate a wilderness
area for the Salmon River and surrounding backcountry. While
researching the history of the Salmon River, I was surprised
to learn that the chain of waterfalls in the Salmon River Gorge
had only been officially named in 1963. I had hiked the Salmon
River trail many times, but had only glimpsed the falls from
the trail, which skirts high above the Salmon River Gorge. The
exception was Little Niagra Falls, an abrupt 15 foot torrent,
that I had bushwacked to some years before. The volume and scale
of that falls - the smallest of the named falls on the Salmon
- compelled me to visit the other falls that were named in 1963
In the spring
of 1983, I organized two expeditions with college friends from
Oregon State University to visit the depths of the Salmon River
Gorge. These trips to the falls were a 20th Anniversary tribute
to the original Oregon Geographic Names Board (OGNB) expedition
that visited and named the falls in the summer of 1963. My 1983
tribute expeditions included friends Dave O'Dell, Jon Osborn
and Doug Lorain, who each appear in some of the photographs that
follow.
The first 1983
mission was to Split and Stein falls, the two uppermost in the
chain of six named falls. Stein Falls is the name proposed in1963
by W. Kirk Braun, honoring Bobby and Johnny Stein of Welches,
who were killed in World War II. The falls occur a two part drop,
with the upper falls cascading in a white, 35 foot curtain into
a deep pool, then immediately plunging over a violent, 75 foot
cataract that roars into a massive amphitheater, framed by 300
foot cliffs.
Braun proposed
the name Split Falls for the next cataract in the string. The
name aptly describes a falls where the Salmon River is split
by a giant wedge of basalt into two 35 foot falls.
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