Crammed with industrial ruins, bound by bureaucracy and choked by generations of trauma, Willamette Falls — once one of the biggest gathering places for Indigenous people in the region — is in the midst of generational change.
Since 1829, when industry first came to the sacred fishing spot, slowly cutting off public access, few Oregonians have been able to access the waterfall, which is not only one of the greatest in the state but one of the heaviest-flowing falls in the world.
A group of four large development projects on each side of Willamette Falls is aimed at righting that wrong, working to bring people back to the waterfall for the first time in nearly two centuries…