From Washington To You
Historic photograph of salmon caught at Kettle Falls on the Columbia River in 1861.
Photograph from National Park Service collections, 1861. Public domain.

From Washington to you

Kettle Falls Fishery

Kettle Falls · Stevens County · falls submerged after Grand Coulee, 1941

NPS calls the drowned falls an inland-Northwest center for more than 9,000 years. Tribes speared and netted thousands of salmon—enough, the park says, for half a year’s diet.

The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation state that the traditional territory of the Colville tribe was primarily located around the Kettle Falls fishery, and the tribal History/Archaeology program publishes The Kettle Falls Fishery as its own history.

NPS says Kettle Falls was an annual gathering place. Angled rock slabs forced the Columbia over a series of falls that blocked migrating salmon and made them easier to catch. Gathered tribes speared and netted thousands of salmon, enough to provide half of their families’ diet for the coming year. A Lake Roosevelt history page calls Kettle Falls the second-largest salmon fishery on the Columbia and says representatives from a 200-mile radius came to fish, trade, share news, and settle quarrels. David Thompson reached the falls on June 19, 1811.

Grand Coulee Dam construction began in 1933 and finished in 1941. NPS says the dam and Lake Roosevelt ended life-sustaining fisheries and changed the cultural, spiritual, and economic lives of the Colville and Spokane tribes. The falls and Fort Colville (Hudson’s Bay Company, 1825) are now underwater. NPS says American Indians still gather annually, praying for the return of the salmon. The sources below are Colville tribal pages and National Park Service Lake Roosevelt pages.

  • History
  • Indigenous History & Place

Sources (4)

Last reviewed: September 21, 2026

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