Snake River below Lower Granite Dam
— the river the dam lets through.
Not only on a wall.
“Lower Granite is the fourth and easternmost of the dams on the lower Snake. Below it the river runs free again, between basalt walls and dry hills, on its long bend through the Palouse toward the Columbia at the Tri-Cities. Chinook and steelhead climb the ladder on the south wall. The water comes out cold from the bottom of the reservoir, and the canyon below it stays quiet most days, with a barge or a tug working the slack water and not much else.
Snake River below Lower Granite Dam, on ceramic.
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The place, in three passes.
Lower Granite Dam sits on the Snake River about 22 miles downstream of Lewiston, Idaho, on the border of Whitman and Garfield Counties in southeast Washington. Completed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1975, it is the easternmost of the four lower Snake River dams and the last barrier to slack-water navigation reaching the inland port at Lewiston. The dam is 100 feet high with a concrete spillway and powerhouse, and its reservoir, Lower Granite Lake, stretches 39 miles upstream.
Below the dam the Snake runs through a basalt canyon on its way to meet the Columbia at the Tri-Cities, about 110 river miles west. The reservoir above is the last impoundment on the migration corridor for Snake River spring and fall Chinook, sockeye, and steelhead, all listed under the Endangered Species Act since the 1990s. Lower Granite's fish ladder counts every adult salmon and steelhead that passes; the running tally is published daily by the Fish Passage Center.
Public access is from State Route 193 on the south side, where the Corps of Engineers operates the project office and a small overlook. Boyer Park and Marina sits at the upstream end of the project on the north shore, with camping, a boat ramp, and a view of the dam. The fish-viewing window in the south fish ladder is open during the spring and fall migration runs. The site is roughly two and a half hours by road from Spokane.