Potlatch River

Catchment area of ​​the Clearwater River, the Potlatch River is visible on the top left.

Template: Infobox River / Obsolete

The Potlatch River is a river in the state of Idaho in the United States. The 90 km long tributary of the Clearwater River belongs to the catchment area of the Columbia River. The river drains an arid area on the Columbia Plateau and part of the western foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Idaho. The name is derived from the concept of potlatch, a particular type of ceremony of the Indians in the Pacific Northwest. An Indian tribe settled on the river already hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans. This then settled in the catchment area of the river, founded end of 19th century farms and began raising cattle. Later, loggers have most of the remaining forests beaten bald. The ecology in the catchment area of the river is still trying to recover from it. Fishing, hiking and camping are the most popular recreational activities on the river, its catchment area to 14 percent is on public land.

Hydrology

The river rises in two branches in the Rocky Mountains of northwestern Idaho. The West Fork drained a portion of Latah County and the East Fork is located in Clearwater County. These two arms unite at Helmer and just below the river reaches a canyon, where it flows to its mouth. In the course of the Pine Creek Canyon, Big Bear Creek, Middle Potlatch Creek and Little Potlatch Creek from the right, and Boulder Creek and Cedar Creeks flow of a left. The Idaho State Highway 3 follows the canyon in its lower portion, at the confluence of the Middle Potlatch Creek is the place Juliaetta. The mouth of the river in the Clearwater River is located at an altitude of 244 m between the cities of Myrtle and Spalding. The river discharge at the mouth, near which a level is, amounts on average to 10.75 m³ / s Here in 2006, a maximum discharge rate of 231 m³ / s was recorded in a flood. Because the river drains an arid area of the Columbia Plateau, the river reached its highest level in the winter and early spring, summer and autumn is just a trickle. The river is largely over and through Columbia Plateau basalt and is thus geologically the Palouse River to the west quite similar.

Forests cover approximately 57 % of its catchment area, about 38% are used for agriculture and livestock. 78 % of the area is privately owned, 14 % are within a National Forest. Seven percent of the catchment area belong to the State, Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Indian Affairs each have a one percent share.

History

The Nez Perce lived for centuries on the banks of the Potlatch River. The area was once a long strip of dry grasslands, surrounded by wooded mountains. Due to its location on the eastern edge of the dry Columbia Plateau directly southwest of the foothills of the Rockies, the catchment area of ​​the Potlatch River receives much more rainfall than the Palouse and Tucannon River. The Lewis and Clark expedition passed the mouth of the Potlatch River in 1805 and again in 1806, when we traveled down the Clearwater River. They described him as a " large creek " and called him Colter's Creek, in honor of the expedition participant John Colter. However, it is not known whether the members of the expedition were the first white people who got to see the river. The current name of the river in 1897 set.

The original environment in which the Indians lived, yet remained relatively intact until the 1870s, the settlers arrived in large numbers in the western Idaho. In addition, many miners came as River gold was discovered in nearby Orofino on the Clearwater. Many of these newcomers justified farms and ranches in the past on the river plains. The fertility of the soil diminishes in the catchment area of the river generally to the south. However, the inaccessibility of the scarce water in the area is an obstacle. The steep walls of the Potlatch River Canyon makes it the farmers hard to take water for irrigation, so they are limited to the cultivation of such fruits, movement without additional watering. Where too little water was available, we used the land for grazing of livestock or for the production of hay.

First, the forests were not particularly affected in the catchment area of the Potlatch River, but after the Holzfällindstrie around the turn of the century between the 19th and 20th centuries grew by leaps and bounds, most of the forests have been cut down. The first sawmills were only made to supply the area with lumber for houses and barns, but soon expanded the Washington, Idaho and Montana Railway their way up in the region, and the transportation of wood in more distant areas was possible. The Holzfällindustrie proved to be very profitable, but had a lasting negative effect on the ecology in the catchment area of the Potlatch River.

Klausen, lubricated with oil chutes, loading stations for the railroad, forestry railways and steam-powered winches (so-called steam donkeys ) were used to exploit the timber resources in the catchment area of the river. Railway dams contributed to the straightening of watercourses, so that the soil erosion increased dramatically on the barren side of the mountains; many watercourses were characterized muddy, as they were naturally. Almost all forests in the area have disappeared, and most of the existing forests are secondary forests.

Ecology

Once the landscape at the Potlatch River was dominated by grasslands, mainly of Idaho fescue ( Festuca idahoensis ) and Pseudoroegnaria spicata was. Black poplars, American aspens, maples and alders formed the riparian forest at Potlatch River. In the foothills thrived primarily a steppe-like grasslands with Oregon hawthorn, snow berries and small conifers, while growing on the banks of smaller inflows mainly hawthorn bushes and whistles. Prairie lilies and forbs shot in the sparsely distributed seasonal wetlands on the river and the larger streams in the catchment. The forests consisted mainly of a mixture of Douglas fir and ponderosa pine in between were isolated coastal fir, giant trees of life, Western white pine and larch; the undergrowth was formed from Holodiscus discolor, Physocarpus, rocks pears, wild roses and snow berries. Wildfire burning in the area from time to time and so made ​​room for new growth. After the procedure, by the people, these vegetation persisted, but to a lesser extent and the grasslands was almost completely displaced by farming. The annual amount of precipitation ranges 370-750 mm, the temperature varies between -4 ° C and 38 ° C.

According to a 2003-2004 study conducted there in the Potlatch River and its tributaries 13 different species of fish, including Rhinichthys osculus, Rhinichthys cataractae, rainbow trout (partly wild and partly used ), brown trout, largemouth bass, common sunfish, Ptychocheilus oregonensis, Richardsonius balteatus, sculpins, Catostomus columbianus, Redhorse and American perch. The migration of steelhead trout, the anadromous migratory form of rainbow trout, was almost completely suppressed, because the construction of dams on the lower reaches of Snake and Columbia River will prevent the fish from migrating. The two types Rhinichthys together form the largest fish population in the catchment area, the largest biomass reached 58.4 %, the steelhead trout. Under all examined during the study streams of the watershed of the West Fork Potlatch River has the greatest biodiversity due to its relative untouched. The lower reaches of the river suffers from chronic pollution from agricultural contaminated surface water. Between 2005 and 2008, the Potlatch River Steelhead Monitoring and Evaluation Program ( PRSME ) was observed, the stock of steelhead trout in the frame. In the main section of the Potlatch River, none of these fish were observed in the eastern Quellarm 197 adult fish were counted, and in one of the larger tributaries, Big Bear Creek, a number of 226 specimens was determined. The migration to the spawning was adopted on East Fork with 6976 and on Big Bear Creek with 9491 fish. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game initiated in 2009 a series of seven projects one whose goal is the preservation of the habitat of fish in the Potlatch River.

Leisure

Many of the mountains and forests in the catchment area of the river are protected as national forests. There are several monitored by the United States Forest Service Campgrounds in the headwaters of the river. Anglers may at Potlatch River and most of its tributaries only brook trout, Cutthroatforellen, rainbow trout and steelhead trout fishing. The Department of Fish and Game has an annual fishing for these species in the river a. At Potlatch River fishing is from the mouth upstream to the Moose Creek at Bovill and allows to his East Fork.