History
The Willamette Falls Canal and Locks Company was formed in 1868 to build a navigation route around the falls. Construction then began on building a canal and lock system around the west end of the falls. The locks opened on January 1, 1873, as the first multi-lift navigation locks in the United States at a cost of $560,000, and has been in continuous use ever since. Maria Wilkins, a steamship, was the first vessel to use the locks. The Army Corps of Engineers purchased the lock system from Portland General Electric in 1915 for $375,000. The locks were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Read more about this topic: Willamette Falls Locks
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)