Willamette Falls: The Industrial Heart That Built West Linn
Before Portland existed, Willamette Falls was a sacred gathering place and the site of America's first long-distance electrical transmission. The history you ride through every day.
Before Portland. Before Oregon City became the territorial capital. Before the Oregon Trail brought thousands west. There was Willamette Falls—and the indigenous peoples who had gathered here for thousands of years.
The Sacred Gathering Place
To the Clackamas, Molalla, and other indigenous peoples of the region, Willamette Falls was far more than a geographic feature. It was Tumwata—a sacred place where salmon gathered in numbers that European settlers would later describe as "miraculous." The falls marked the boundary between the lower and upper Willamette Valley, and fishing rights here were negotiated and shared among tribes for millennia.
The basalt ledge that creates the falls forced migrating salmon to slow and concentrate. This natural phenomenon supported permanent villages and seasonal fishing camps that sustained indigenous communities with reliable protein year after year. When you ride along the Willamette today, you're following paths that served as trade routes long before settlers arrived.
Industrial Transformation
The same falling water that gathered salmon also represented power—raw, renewable energy in an era before electricity. When Euro-American settlers arrived, they saw the falls through a different lens: industrial potential.
"The power of these falls, harnessed and transmitted, will light cities we haven't yet imagined."
— From a 1889 Portland Oregonian editorial on the first power transmission
The Paper Mill Era
For most of the 20th century, the pulp and paper industry defined West Linn. The Willamette Falls Paper Company—later Crown Zellerbach, then Blue Heron—operated continuously for over a century. The mill whistle marked shift changes. The smell of sulfur from the pulping process drifted across town. Generations of West Linn families built their lives around mill employment.
The industry wasn't without controversy. Fish populations declined as the river became an industrial waterway. The Clackamas people, already displaced from their ancestral fishing grounds, watched as pollution further degraded the salmon runs that had sustained their ancestors.
When the Blue Heron mill finally closed in 2011, it marked the end of an era—but also the beginning of a new chapter.
Rediscovery and Revival
Today, the former mill site is undergoing transformation. The Willamette Falls Legacy Project aims to create the first public access to the falls in over 150 years. When complete, visitors—including e-bike riders following the riverwalk—will be able to stand at the edge of the second-largest waterfall by volume in the United States.
For the first time since the 1860s, people will be able to experience the falls the way indigenous peoples did for thousands of years: as a place of power, abundance, and connection to the natural world.
Ride It: Willamette Falls History Loop
Start at Willamette Park and follow the river path south toward Oregon City. The 6-mile round trip is mostly flat with excellent e-bike infrastructure. At the Oregon City end, you can view the falls from the observation platform (when accessible) and explore the interpretive displays about the site's industrial and indigenous history.
Best For: All e-bike types. Easy terrain, paved throughout.
Don't Miss: The Willamette Falls Locks—still operational and one of the oldest continuously operating lock systems in the country.
Why This History Matters
When we ride along the Willamette, we're traveling through layers of history. The basalt that creates the falls is millions of years old—volcanic rock from the same geologic processes that shaped the entire Pacific Northwest. The fishing sites are thousands of years old—evidence of sophisticated societies that thrived here long before European contact. The industrial infrastructure is over a century old—artifacts of an era when water power drove American manufacturing.
And the e-bikes we ride? They're the latest chapter in the story of human transportation through this landscape. Just as the falls powered the first long-distance electrical transmission, today's e-bikes are powered by the same kind of innovation that transformed this region.
The salmon are returning. Native fish populations, while still threatened, show signs of recovery as dams are modified and pollution controls improve. Perhaps someday, riders along the Willamette will once again see salmon leaping at the falls—a living connection to the place as it existed before industry, before settlement, before history as we typically record it.