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Headwaters Heritage Initiative
Restoring Freeways For Fish
Project: Gold Hill Diversion Dam
Rogue River
Gold Hill, Oregon
Miles of habitat now more accessible to fish - 358
Project Completion - July 2008
In late July 2008, the last chunks of concrete from the eight-foot high, 900-foot long Gold Hill Diversion Dam were removed from the Rogue River. The Ideal Cement Company built this dam to generate electricity for their company's local plant, but their Gold Hill operations stopped in the early 1970's and power production ended with them. The dam and the diversion canal, however, continued to deliver municipal water to the City of Gold Hill and esyrt diversion continued until 2006.
Gold Hill Diversion Dam slowed six different kinds of upstream migrating fishes - spring and fall Chinook salmon, summer and winter steelhead, Pacific lamprey, and the federally threatened coho salmon. Water diverted into a 1,500-foot long canal continued to re-route downstream migrating juvenile fish. Those re-routed fish that were able to avoid the hungry birds feeding along the edges of the canal were unceremoniously dumped over a concrete spillway back into the Rogue River, always dazed and frequently injured.
Because the Gold Hill Diversion Dam sat square on the mainstem of the Rogue River, each and every fish heading to and from the productive upper half of the Rogue River Basin had to leap or plunge over this dam. All of this leaping and plunging and scraping against concrete took a toll on these fish. And to impart all of this delay and injury to migrating salmon and lamprey to provide the City of Gold Hill with their water supply was not necessary.
In 2006, the City of Gold Hill built a pumping station upstream from the dam. This pumping station now serves the city with its full supply of water, leaving the dam without a useful function and clearing the way for its removal.
Salmon, steelhead, and Pacific lamprey returning to the Rogue River and destined for spawning areas upstream of the City of Gold Hill now have one fewer dam to "leap" over. Young salmon and lamprey swimming towards the Pacific Ocean from the upper reaches of the Rogue Basin will no longer have to negotiate the diversion canal on their way downstream.
All of this thanks to the City of Gold Hill and their partners, cooperatively working to establish a vision that met each party's interests - including the interests of the fish.
Generous support from the Bella-Vista Foundation, the Bullitt Foundation, the Burning Foundation, the Laird Norton Family Foundation, and the World Wildlife Fund funded the National Center's commitment to this project since 2004.
Photos by Brian Barr and Scott Wright of River Design Group.
