The 150th anniversary celebration for the Willamette Falls Locks in January 2023 includes a photography exhibit and a “birthday party” as well as bringing a new hope for the future for this once endangered historic site. Constructed in the early 1870s, the historic locks in West Linn, Oregon, allowed for safe river passage around the forty-foot high Willamette Falls, and they are the oldest, multi-chambered, by-pass canal and navigation lock system in America. These locks, which provide a critical link allowing marine traffic to navigate this section of the Willamette River, were closed by the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in 2011 because of safety concerns created by deferred maintenance.

Local stakeholders including the City of West Linn, Clackamas County, the State of Oregon, and others—including the National Trust for Historic Preservation—hope to repair and reopen the locks, allowing paddlers and boaters to travel between Corvallis and Portland on the Willamette River. “The National Trust designation for the Willamette Falls Locks in 2012 as a National Treasure served as an important catalyst for revitalization efforts,” notes Peggy Sigler, former National Trust for Historic Preservation Oregon field officer. Sigler adds, “The National Trust’s assistance helped open doors by providing clout, access, funding, and skilled organizational, legal, and lobbying resources.”

Adding to other significant preservation milestones and progress made between 2012 and 2017 after the USACE closed the locks, several key developments in recent years now provide a clear path forward to reopen the locks. In 2017, a new Willamette Falls Locks Commission (WFLC) was created through Oregon Senate Bill 256 to “…advise state, local, and regional government agencies on development and implementation of a plan for repair, opening, operation and maintenance of the Willamette Falls navigation canal and locks.”

This in turn led to the establishment of the Willamette Falls Locks Authority in 2021 through Oregon House Bill 2564 as “a public corporation with the mission to establish ownership, oversight, and management of the Willamette Falls Locks project for the purposes of enhancing the economic vitality of Oregon through facilitating the resiliency and navigability of the Willamette River and repairing, maintaining, upgrading and operating the Willamette Falls Locks project…for commercial, transportation, recreational, cultural, history, heritage and tourism purposes.“ This new 11-member Authority will assume ownership of the locks after the USACE completes necessary repairs.

The Authority is staffed and managed by Oregon Solutions, which is part of the National Policy Consensus Center for the state of Oregon, and the Authority is currently seeking their first executive director. Funding the capital repairs for the locks is being provided in part by $7.2M in Oregon lottery bond funding allocated in 2021. Sandy Carter, a member of the new Authority as well as a board member for the Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation and the founder of the One Willamette River Coalition, reflects that “after a decade of slow but steady progress with partners and advocates, we have finally achieved the critical mass of support that resulted in the creation of the Willamette Falls Locks Authority. We are now on track to have the Authority take over the ownership and operation of the West Linn navigation canal from the Corps of Engineers within the next three years.”

For more information, visit the Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation Facebook page.

Amy Webb is a senior field director at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.