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
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—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)