Before the days of irrigation water and hydroelectricity, Shoshone Falls was an amazing sight to behold, water plunging 212 feet over the rocks, with the roar of the falls heard up to ten miles away. The falls created an impassable barrier for the migrating steelhead and salmon returning from the Pacific Ocean to spawn. In the spring, Indigenous people living throughout the Snake River Plain formed small bands to capture fish from the river and it remained an important area for Natives to gather, fish, and trade. Downstream, fish were plentiful and provided life-sustaining food and an important component of Shoshone culture and spirituality.

Archaeologists insist Shoshone Falls was formed over 14,500 years ago when Lake Bonneville catastrophically flooded during the Pleistocene Ice Age. A traditional Shoshone-Bannock story denotes a different story explaining the cosmology of the Shoshone/Snake River. Ejuba, a coyote, went fishing in the country of Yellowstone. On his way home, the fish and the water in his lined basket became too heavy to carry and he tripped and spilled the contents. Although he tried several times to build various rocky dams to contain the spilled water, it continually rushed over and created several waterfalls. The river that Ejuba created is known today as the Snake River. The first dam he built was Idaho Falls, the second was American Falls, and the third dam split into two parts to become Twin Falls. The last and largest dam Ejuba constructed was Shoshone Falls. Another Shoshone tale describes a maiden distraught over the separation from her lover who hurled herself into the Snake River canyon at a point near the edge of the falls, a fenced off area known as “Lover’s Leap.”

Shoshone Falls has undergone tremendous changes. The once roaring waters that were heard from miles away now dwindle to a stream. The demand for water to irrigate the land and the desire for clean hydroelectricity dictates the amount of water that plunges over the falls. When visiting the falls on such a day it is hard to imagine that a writer once compared Shoshone Falls to Niagara Falls saying, “Surely there must be a God above. . .who made these Western Falls, which soon shall mock the magic art of Eastern ones and sink them into insignificance.” Visit the falls in the early Spring if you hope to catch a glimpse of its original majesty at maximum flow.

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The Hells Canyon Complex was controversial before even being built, ever since the Idaho public scrutinized the Idaho Power Company’s request to license three dams on the Snake River in 1947. During the New Deal era, public power—a method of energy administration defined in which communities owned infrastructure under local government—was the norm for hydroelectricity; while Idaho Power wanted to privately run three dams, advocates for public power in the region instead contended against Idaho Power in favor of establishing a single, high dam. After a long battle, private power won when the Federal Power Commission issued Idaho Power a license in 1955, allowing them to build a private hydroelectric complex, in turn signaling a decline of public power’s favor nationwide. Due to the Hells Canyon dam construction in the deepest gorge on the North American continent, the construction process proved difficult, and builders had to dig a twenty-three-mile access road into the Idaho side of the canyon. Along with the road, contractors set up offices, facilities, housing, and a mess hall for construction workers. In a matter of six months, the Hells Canyon Dam’s construction was complete in 1967, and it began generating electricity shortly after. The political controversy in the postwar years about whether hydropower was something to be publicly or privately owned has roots deep in the ecological. The Hells Canyon Complex sits on the Snake River Basin, a desert ecosystem, while many of the models that public ownership advocates used were based on dams built on the Columbia River Basin, which was forested and mountainous. Because of the ecological differences inherent to these basins, people interacted differently with these water systems, and as a result, their priorities varied in what services a dam should provide. In the Columbia Basin, priority was given to energy production, while in the Snake Basin, priority was given to irrigation. This is largely due to the relationship people had with the land. In the Snake Basin, people cultivated the land for crop harvest, so they wanted the Hells Canyon Complex to have irrigation as its chief operating principle. This gave wind to Idaho Power’s licensing for the three Snake River dams; a single high dam would better serve power generation, but Idaho Power contended that the three-dam complex better served irrigation. While ecology shaped Hells Canyon Dam, the dam also reshaped the environment. By its very design, the Hells Canyon Complex has no passage for andronomous fish species, a type of fish that migrates from freshwater to the ocean in the Snake and Columbia Rivers. Limiting certain fish species’ ability to access any of the upper Snake River Basin between the complex to Shoshone Falls has dramatically reduced the species’ population and disturbed several ecosystems. This can be traced back to the general neglect of biological research before the construction of dams along the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

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River travel was one of Glen Hyde's passions, born out of a childhood spent outdoors. In his first significant river excursion in 1919, Glen and his friend Jess Nebeker made a six-month canoe trip through the rivers of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. This journey's success encouraged the Hyde to continue pursuing his favorite hobby, which eventually led to his decision to sail down the Salmon and Snake Rivers with his sister Jeanne in 1926. Known as the “River of No Return,” the Salmon River consists of a series of rapids along its length, meaning that most of the traffic on it is limited to relatively small crafts. Boatmen on the Salmon River in the 1920s generally preferred to use boats called scows. These small wooden crafts measured no more than thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide and usually carried two people. The crew of a scow typically numbered just two people, one to steer the boat in the front, while the other steered from the back. The crew steered using oars called sweeps. Since the 1870s, these boats had transported goods and supplies down the Salmon and Snake Rivers, with rivermen like Harry Guleke becoming a fixture of the river economy. However, Glen and Jeanne's trek down the rivers was different. Rather than travel for business, the Hydes made the journey purely for their enjoyment. They sought out Guleke, who Glen already knew, to help them construct a scow and teach them how to navigate the river. Naming their new craft Balaam’s Ass, the Hydes left Salmon, Idaho, on August 26, 1926.  The siblings, especially Glen, learned the basics of river boating relatively quickly. However, they did have several setbacks. At the Pine Creek rapids, they lost both their sweeps and had to replace them with logs. The scow upturned at Salmon Falls and nearly flooded, losing most of their supplies in the process. All the while, the weather was inclement, soaking what supplies they saved with rainwater. Despite these troubles, Jeanne noted that Glen seemed to be in his element, enjoying the sites they passed as they traveled down the Salmon and into the Snake River. Their journey came to an end after seventeen days when the siblings reached Lewiston, Idaho, 300-miles from their starting point.  While Glen and Jeanne received little acclaim for their accomplishment, as boating on the Salmon and Snake Rivers was common, they, especially Glen, did display dogged determination to succeed in their intended goal. The trip also further reinforced Glen’s passion for river boating, a hobby which, in late 1928, he would use to seek fame for himself and his new wife on their honeymoon. Glen Hyde believed he was ready for the Colorado River.

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