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I'm going to try to find some info on the old course of the river, where it followed through what is now the Wilson River valley when it flowed more straight into the Pacific (at least I remember hearing that before). Aboutmovies 00:45, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
- Pete 08:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
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help)Citation for "three times size of Great Pyramid" and some other stuff here. - Pete ( talk) 21:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I gotta stop finding these, the work never ends! But...this 4-part OPB series is awfully cool, and probably has lots of stuff that could be used for this article, and/or related ones... http://news.opb.org/series/2007/columbia/ - Pete ( talk) 07:26, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I've taken another look at Ruhrfisch's comments from his/her GA review, and believe all the most significant concerns have been met. Not every single concern, but the most important ones. I'm going to re-nominate, and leave a note to Ruhrfisch requesting that he/she revisit the review if time allows. Any thoughts? (I know there are still many improvements in progress, but I don't think any of them will hold this back from GA. I'm convinced by recent comments that FA may be a little further off.) - Pete ( talk) 18:32, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
NOTE: I removed several items that have been addressed. Ruhrfisch's full list is still preserved in /Archive3.
Congratulations and well done! Ruhrfisch ><>°° 21:53, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
turns out there's a Biodiversity Atlas underway funded by the BC Gov with the participation of Selkirk College. The main links off maps.gov.bc.ca didn't work but I found this which gives statistics on the Canadian length etc. and is a spinoff of the main project page. I don't have time to "mine" the article and add relevant contents here, but there was a need for Canadian-side citations/data so this should provide some of hte main stuff. Skookum1 ( talk) 16:48, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
i.e. the indigenous peoples section but in ref to Kennewick Man and other early-digs/finds; I'm mostly thinking of only one addition, but I don't know where to find the citation; so many hundred years ago, IIRC about 1500BP, maybe 3000BP, there was a pottery-using culture (presumably also pottery-making but finds are marginal); buried in alluvial ash or whatever, evidently wiped out by natural disaster. Bona fide but I don't know more than that tidbit, remembered from the CHINOOK-L listserve's discussions of various things. Oh, another aboriginal name for th river was Sesotkwa or Tsesotkwa, but nobody knew which language it was from; similarly when Simon Fraser started down the Fraser it was in the hopes to prove it was the Tacoutche Tesse, the Columbia; although once again in whose language I don't know, as that's not a Carrier-looking name (ko=river) nor is it Salishan (meen/een=river). The Chinookan name that turns up is Wihml - Wimhl? - with only one vowel; whether etymologically it means "big"+"river" I don't know. Oh, there's another "ancient" dig in the upper Columbia somewhere; might be in that diversity atlas or resources connected to it...basic drift is maybe there should be an archaoelogical section; won't be large but worthwhile.
I was looking for other stuff about elsewhere in BC and came across a Columbia Basin page on "Living Landscapes", a Royal BC Museum webproject; the Human history page looks like it has some interesting stuff but the natural history page looks like it has some material useful for this page, and for Columbia Basin. Also found this but you probably already know about it (?) Skookum1 ( talk) 15:36, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Although Columbia Lake is nominally considered the headwater of the Columbia, ultimately the source is the Columbia Icefield, hence the name (as also of Mount Columbia. Which little upper tributaries exactly come from the icefiled I'll have to look at later; I had a vicious stomach flu yesterday and have to mobilate myself for errands and some fresh air right now; though this was worth mentioning, maybe someone can stitch a mention into the article on it? Also found this which if you zoom in on BC is interesting, more for the way the Fraser basin was dealt with; but useful anyway perhaps. The diverted areas shown are, from N to S, the Nechako, Bridge and Cheakamus Rivers; only Nechako changes actual basins, though, so I don't see the point, i.e. there's other basin-to-same basin diversions...I'll have to read up the backinfo on this page to se what's up with that. Not that the Whatshan is a big deal, nor Alouette Lake nor Jones Lake; usually these national-level things are complied with only a loose understanding of BC geography/history, though.....(my stock complaint, no?)_ Skookum1 ( talk) 18:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
that line has always bothered me, although the exception to it I'm thinking of doesn't pass through the Cascades from one side to the other; it loops through it - the Skagit River; I guess it never crosses the divide of the Cascades, though....but is such a concept of a "divide" on a range pierced by, or spanning, the Columbia, even relevant? Skookum1 ( talk) 03:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm doing some bits of minor copyediting and am stuck on this sentence, from the Navigation section: The use of steamboats along the river, beginning in 1850... There is a footnote, to this timeline page, which phrases it "1850: Steamboats Columbia and Lot Whitcomb begin regular service on the Columbia River." The thing is there was a steamboat in regular service on the river before 1850, at least to Fort Vancouver: the Beaver (steamship), which arrived on the river in 1836. I thought about rewording the sentence The regular use of steamboats along the river..., but that isn't quite right either because the Beaver was in "regular use", even if its operations were not limited to the river. Anyway, I can't come up with a way to reword this bit, especially given the existence of the footnote, which does not mention the Beaver. So I'm just mentioning it here. It is a minor point to be sure, but symptomatic of an unfortunate US bias present in many history books and web pages. Pfly ( talk) 04:46, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
So, this page has been quiet for a while, but after the last burst of activity we got it to good article status with the notion that is was near or at feature article status. Anyone interested in working for FA? I've never been involved in such a thing and would find it interesting. And I don't mean right now per se, but over the next few months perhaps? I also don't know how to go about starting such a procedure, so I thought I'd just toss the idea out. If nothing else it would be interesting to see what criticisms come out in the process. Pfly ( talk) 06:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Also, while I'm at it, this talk page is getting long, perhaps we should archive most of it? Pfly ( talk) 06:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>Names are done. Dates are unlinked except those not in brackets in the "cite" family of citations. Those will be acceptable at FA and don't have to be fixed by hand. (The script does not touch them.) I need to think carefully before I tinker with the course description. Finetooth ( talk) 05:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
As someone who doesn't have trouble (usually) editing articles with lots of markup in them, I have to say that the infobox in this article is really enormous (in the edit mode), and slightly obnoxious. To preserve ease of editing, I think it might behoove us to move the infobox in to a separate template ala Template:ColumbiaRiverInfobox or the like. Any objections? Steven Walling (talk) 00:58, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
I have drafted a nomination for FA here: Talk:Columbia River/FAnom
Please take a look, and edit it as you see fit. I'd also love to see a number of us listed as co-nominators, so please add your name. Let's aim to submit this Wednesday. - Pete ( talk) 19:31, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>The half-dozen or so dabs are fixed. "Homestead" was one of them, and nothing on the dab seemed to explain what the word means in this context. My solution was to unlink. Finetooth ( talk) 23:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Good job with the dab checker..is that a program you download, or a script..? I submitted the PR nom, so if you want to ask Moni to take a look, go to it! I'm not sure if there's a policy forbidding links that require login -- it's something I've wondered before. The citations should be fine either way; if somebody insists that we unlink them, so be it (though in my personal view, that reduces the value of the citation). Re: Homestead, I think Homestead principle might suffice, but if you don't like it I'm fine with leaving it unlinked..or pointing to Wiktionary. - Pete ( talk) 01:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>I've written to Moni seeking her sage advice. Finetooth ( talk) 03:35, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
On first reading of this truly excellent article:
Massively good article, so I'm not even going to try changing any of that stuff, I'll leave this for your consideration. Great work! Franamax ( talk) 02:44, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
And just to pile on: could the sections be re-organized so that (new) "History" encompasses "Indigenous peoples" and "New waves of explorers". and (new) "Harnessing the river" contains "Damming the river", "Irrigation" and "Hydroelectricity"? This would mean splitting up the "Navigation" section, the first bit would go to History, "Opening the passage..." and "Deeper shipping channel" would go to "Harnessing...". Just an idea, it has a pretty good structure already. Franamax ( talk) 05:27, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I've completed the table based on the USGS and NRCan links I've mentioned above. I would regard the USGS data as definitive, except trumped by NRCan, which shows international figures. The table now needs a metric-equivalent column, n'est ce-pas?
I will invite scrutiny of my changes - for instance did I pick the right Sandy River? Also, there are some serious discrepancies with some of the linked articles - a conscientious editor would follow those up. And I haven't yet compared the USGS numbers with the existing ref's. An even more conscientious editor would infobox up the subsidiary articles with the necessaries - however, I suppose I am not that conscientious editor! Franamax ( talk) 04:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
By the way, I still have the problem I brought up, now in Archive 3. In Firefox the images overlap the tributary chart. This is on my Mac and the Windows Vista box I'm on right now. Just chekced IE and it looks good there. Here's a couple screenshots from the Windows Vista box. Firefox version 2.0.0.16 on Vista. The archive link has screenshots from Macintosh Firefox. Does anyone else have this issue? Pfly ( talk) 12:59, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I have removed these three images. I believe you're right that galleries are not encouraged, but there are exceptions. In my view, when there is a wealth of varied visual material related to an article, it's worth making an exception. You may recall that Hanford Site has a very interesting gallery, and made it through FA. However, I'm not sure these images are really that indispensable. I've pasted them at the right for y'all's perusal. - Pete ( talk) 00:29, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Your Deschutes photo is beautful, Pete, but adding it caused the map below to totally obscure the chart! I don't know why I have such problems with this section. But in any case, I changed the image placement from right to left, which makes the chart mostly readable, though not fully. Consider it a temporary fix-- I would like to add some text to this section about drainage basin sizes, and the added text might make image placing easier. I figure instead of troubleshooting the images now I should wait until the text I have in mind is added. Make sense? As for the new text I'm thinking of, it would just be something short about the chart: It lists the largest tributaries by discharge, but now that we have added drainage basin sizes to it, there may be the implication that these are the largest drainage basins, even if they are not ranked in order. In truth they are far from the largest basins (well, some of them are). So I thought it worth explaining that, and perhaps mentioning a few of the larger basins that are not on the chart. Like the ephemeral little Crab Creek has a 13,200 square mile basin! Also, some second order tributaries have drainage basins larger than most first order streams, which seems worth a quick mention. For example, the Owyhee River, a tributary of the Snake, has a basin 11,049 square miles large, which is larger than most first order tributaries excepting the 4 or 5 huge ones. Anyway, just to explain my less than idea image edit-- to be made better soon? Pfly ( talk) 18:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>I worked up the neighboring basin stuff last night and this morning and added it just now as per the discussion above. The prose might need some tweaking; I may have used the word "watershed" a few too many times. The new paragraph might give you some wiggle room with the graphics. I'll be looking for more stuff about the watershed. A basic description of the landforms should be possible. User:Northwesterner1's work on ecoregions might come in handy somewhere here. Finetooth ( talk) 19:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>Pfly, reading this fresh this morning, it seemed to make much better sense that it did late last night when my brain was filled with fog. I tweaked it slightly, clarifying the two different uses of "north" and merging some of the short paragraphs. Shorties are OK for emphasis but at FAC are deprecated by more editors than not, in my limited experience. My own view is that shorties will be hard to defend at FAC unless they are relatively rare. They function like bolding or italics. It's a matter of taste rather than any hard-and-fast rule I can point to. If others here disagree, please revert. Pete, as the main contributor, might have to decide this question for the article as a whole. Finetooth ( talk) 17:57, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>I added a fairly superficial bit about landforms, flora and fauna, just now with mention of a few of the more spectacular or important in each category. Make bold edits where you see fit, Franamax. Your ideas sound fine to me. Finetooth ( talk) 23:04, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
I found the recent FAC discussion of citations to subscription-only sources here. As a courtesy to readers, two different ways of handling these will probably be acceptable, as illustrated below. The phrase "subscription required" fits nicely into the format parameter in the "cite journal" template. I haven't tested the other members of the "cite" family, so I can't say for sure about all of them. I think the Newsbank links in this article all require a subscription or library card. I doubt that news articles have doi numbers, but I don't know for sure. Shall I attempt to add "subscription required" to the templates for the Newsbank group?
Finetooth ( talk) 19:21, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
The DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier and is one more way of keeping track of things. (Weasel alert!) I think we can forget about it here. I just tried out the "subscription required" in "cite news" for citation 73. Although the syntax is a little odd, it works and is probably OK. Finetooth ( talk) 20:48, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent> Yes, thanks a bunch. I see you fixed at least two of them, and I fixed one more. I've got to disappear for a while, and I may not get back to this until this evening. Finetooth ( talk) 18:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>I'm willing to declare this problem solved. If we spot any more that are only intermittently accessible, let's label them "subscription required" just to be safe. Finetooth ( talk) 04:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Franamax, for tracking down the Birchbark station. I took the day off from staring at my computer and went to get some photos of the lower Columbia Slough for a different article. Your note about the Birchbark station led me to this Environment Canada site, which has gauge information for the whole country. The Canadians have at least one other gauge on the Columbia that measures the discharge rate. It's station 08NB005 at Donald, not too far from the source at Columbia Lake. I haven't yet figured out how to get the average discharge rate from the available charts and tables, but I'm sure it's possible. If this sounds like fun to you, go for it. Finetooth ( talk) 23:35, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>That sounds like a good idea. As I kept finding and adding more stats, I became worried that the sheer volume of it would cause reader fatigue at the very beginning of an otherwise highly readable article. I think the existing "Discharge" subsection could reasonably be reduced to the first half of its first paragraph. I could move the rest to Columbia River flow. What do others think of this proposal? Finetooth ( talk) 23:25, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
This peer review discussion has been closed.
This article has been the focus of a broad collaboration for some time. There are
a number of us who have put in a lot of work to make the best article possible; we've been through two thorough GA reviews, and solicited feedback on a number of topics from a number of people, both on and off Wikipedia. We feel that the article is nearing readiness for a Featured article nomination, and would like a fresh set of eyes on it first. Thanks in advance for any feedback!
Pete (
talk) 20:55, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
I just happened to look at the dams map that's in the tribs section and glanced at the colour-key once I zoomed in on it; there needs to be a third colour for BC Hydro Dams; initially I was expecting that the treaty dams would be marked distinctly, but they're not. Brilliant I'm not so sure about, Waneta and Seven Mile are AFAIK I know BC Hydro, as are definitely Keenleyside, Revelstoke and Mica - and Duncan. BC Hydro ("Hydro" we call it usually) is a Crown Corporation, although half-privatized of late (Accenture runs the accounting and customer service division....) and so publicly-owned; it's the equivalent of "federally owned" in the US - hydroelectric resources in Canada are the jurisdiction of the provinces, not federal authority; the feds only got involved here because of the cross-border nature of the basin, they got involved in Quebec because of funding and land-claims issues. Brilliant used to be West Kootenay Power and Light, and all the little dams and powerhouses around the Kootenays were mostly part of that grid, though quite a few were privately owned. I'll check BC Hydro's list of installations and see if Brilliant's included; the whole WKPL infrastructure is integrated into Hydro now, I think; also it would be nice to see the Slocan and Similkameen included, since the Sanpoil and other small rivers are in there - and Trout Lake, no less, which I guess it's time to flesh out articles in that area (lots of ghost towns). BTW once again I'm impressed at hte thoroughness of the build-out of this article; the Fraser River article needs major work and is a skeleton by comparison; it's just been nominated, like this article, for teh hard-copy version of WP (v.0.7?).......has anyone here seen any resources that might have discharge rates for the Spillimacheen, Blaeberry, Beaver, Kicking Horse, Bush/Valencienees, Wood and Canoe? Some are quite large, I belive; .also there's another one that comes down from the Monashees opposite Revelstoke, at teh eastern outlet of Eagle Pass; it's not small....BC Basemap has been buried within a new site GeoBC, so can't check easily just now what it's called...... Skookum1 ( talk) 03:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
(outdent) Now that I look more closely at that map (link to the website it came from), I see a number of issues. First, some of the dam labels are missing or confusingly placed. Especially: Wells and Chief Joseph, Priest Rapids and Lower Monumental, Keenleyside and Brilliant, Swan Falls and Lucky Peak, and a number of others. Second, some dam dots have no label, like on the Kootenay, Spokane, and Pend Oreille Rivers. Third, I don't understand the criteria for including a dam on this map. It isn't dams whose primary purpose is hydroelectricity, as it includes Lucky Peak (flood control), and American Falls (irrigation), Duncan (storage), and the 4 lower Snake dams (navigation primary purpose). It isn't size, as it includes Milltown, which is only 12 meters tall, not even enough to warrant the standard term "large dam". Large dams seem to be normally defined as over 15 meters tall (and major as over 150 meters). The map shows a number of dams that are barely "large", like Box Canyon (32 m), American Falls (32 m), Swan Falls (33 m), CJ Strike (32 m), etc. And it doesn't show dams such as Mossyrock (185 m, hydroelectric, Cowlitz R), Detroit (141 m, hydroelectric, North Santiam River, Willamette basin), Round Butte (134 m, hydroelectric, Deschutes R), Owyhee (127 m, irrigation, Owyhee R), Swift and Yale (126 m & 98 m, hydroelectric, Lewis R). I got these stats from NPDP, which is US only. I browsed Skookum's links quickly but had trouble finding very large or major dams that aren't on the map, except perhaps Corra Linn and the Kootenay Canal project (75 m drop). Other dams that seem notable but are not on the map: Minidoka (Snake), Palisades (Snake), Cascade, Bonnington complex, Slocan, others. So, these three issues together make me want to make a new, better map. Of course I don't have the time, but perhaps I could do it anyway, eventually. Here's a few links about the various ways "large" and "major" dams seem to be defined: 1 (15 and 150 m, plus some other factors), 2 (50+ ft, and/or various factors), 3 (150+ m, and/or other factors for "major"), 4 (major again 150+ m plus other factors). Pfly ( talk) 21:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Skookum, do you think you could fill in the chart below? I get lost in all the details -- if we can get a clear spec of how to change the graphic, I can get to work. Also, are there any that wound up public, apart from the treaty dams? If so, what's the political history of that? I stuck in a paragraph in the Hydroelectric section about influential U.S. politicians like George Joseph and Charles McNary -- who on the BC side should be included? Did W. A. C. Bennett have something to do with this? Sorry, my knowledge of the BC side is pretty spotty.
As far as Kootenay-area politicians go in relation to hydro history I'm at a bit of a loss; it's not my part of hte province; no doubt West Kootenay & Light had their pet MLA (an MLA is like a state represesntative/senator, an MP is like a congressional representative) and it won't take much scratching to find out who. But the towering figure in BC history for hydroelectricity is without doubt WAC Bennett; the location of the Treaty Dams, and which ones were chosen/allowed, is entirely his legacy - he threatened to pull BC out of Confederation if he didn't get his way, no less, and both Ottawa and DC followed his drum and also paid the piper; unpopular as the Columbia deal was, he made it more palatable but cutting a deal that Ottawa would never have seen fit to, i.e. protecting BC inteests and revenues, as well as keeping too much of BC from being flooded out (other wise an expanded Columbia Lake would have made t he Purcells and Selkirks a Vancouver Island-sized "freshwater island", i.e. Kinbasket, Arrow, Koocanusa and Kootenay Lakes plus Columbia Lk would all be one big lake...if the US had had its way, which Ottawa was prepared to give them....not the first time BC got teh shaft from Ottawa, one reason for Bennett's popularity in standing up to the sell-out; people in living memory at the time had seen the debacle of the Alaska Panhandle, when BC lost half of its coastline (in contemporary eyes)). Boundary I'm not sure about, I'll check back on that site again; that's not hte same as Seven Mile is it? Waneta as noted previously is Teck Cominco owned, Brilliant is private with a contractor now expanding it, the otehrs are Hydro without doubt. But please note, BC Hydro is not Canadian-government owned, but BC-government owned, there's a big difference. I suggest maybe green or a different shade of blue than used for the river; BC Hydro's long-time colour scheme was a light green and sky blue.....elegantly set off by the "H" logo that is meant to look like two mountains reflecting in teh water; come to think of it maybe the company logo is PD - ? - and could be used as a symbol? Thing there, though, is taht the Treaty Dams kind of need their own colouration (Mica, Duncan, Keenleyside) and that colouration should be shared by Libby etc...... Skookum1 ( talk) 01:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
[undent]I added Seven Mile (BLUE/Hydro) and I see Boundary has City of Seattle.....are you sure that municipal and private shoudl be the same? For one thing, a power plant owned by a distant city, like Boundary, is a totally different thing thatn one owned by a local city, as with Bonnington's relationship with the City of Nelson. Tecko Cominco is local - i.e. the smelter in Trail so no rpoblem there. I'm wondering two things further - if FortisBC dams shouldnt' have their own colour - if the city of Seattle has more than one, or a few, then likewise - but the reasno for Fortis/WKPL having its own deisgnation is that there are/were so many projects, and the local infrastructure (until the Treaty) was dominated by them; I'm thinking a closeup showing the Kootenay-Pend Oreille-Columbia core region so all can be shown; the Lower Kootenay dams are too many to fit on the map at teh scale, and with the symbols shown. Skookum1 ( talk) 20:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
[undent]Might as well note here that there are separate categories for dams vs powerhouses - I think "power station" may be the catname, the implication being that the powerhouses (though in cases like the Bonningtons and such the dam and the power station are virtually the same building (not BC Hydro's style, by teh way, not even when they have room). So it makes sense for there to be a cat that includes non-immediately hydro dams as well as, well, reservoirs, because those are still dams; the presence of a power station would invoke the second category; one for dams, one for power plants - the latter being able to include things like Burrard Thermal and Trojan Nuclear Station (sorry don't konw it's official name); and the old coal-fired plants in some - many - mining towns.....BTW Karl the main BCGNIS index is searchable, and all dams are in it with their latlongs; you can also download the provincial gazetteer, or have it sent to you, via a link on the "free" section on www.geodatabc.com, or is it geodata.bc.ca, wherever http://maps.gov.bc.ca redirects to now; it's the full database of all placenames, including all dams and such.... Skookum1 ( talk) 06:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Kmusser: Counting the Lewis & Clark map, there are currently four maps on the article. That's a whole lot! If you're going to redo the one of the dams, maybe you can incorporate the features of one of the others, in a way that makes it possible to reduce the number of maps? The "course" map springs to mind, though possibly your general map could accommodate both cities (as it currently does) and dams… - Pete ( talk) 02:06, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
A quick note that this is still on my list of things to do, real life has just kept me from getting to it, will get there eventually. Kmusser ( talk) 12:34, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
How about we continue this discussion at Talk:List of dams in the Columbia River watershed, so as not to overburden this talk page, and those who are focusing on other topics? - Pete ( talk) 05:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Couple of things; one is I know what you mean by the Rocky Mountains here, i.e. including the Cabinet, Salish and US Selkirk Mountains; it's confusing for a Canadian reader as our conception of the Rockies ends at the Trench (though I know better, but them I'm not a tpyical Canuck reader...); it might be better to specify the ranges rather than using a generality that's US in context. Also re that, "Columbia Basin" in BC, when it's used to refer to BC only, would tend to mean only the direct basin of the Columbia itself, and not including the Kettle and Okanagan-Similkameen (escept in large formal planning bodies...but even that one I posted above somewhere is just hte Kootenays, plus the Boundary, no? Did it include theOkanagan?). Anyway just to note that the US usage of "Columbia Basin" is not the same as the BC one - when speaking outside of the pure geographic river-basin - in the same way that "Columbia Basin" means the region described in the US, in Canada/BC - if used - it would tend to mean the Kootenays only, or even excluding the Kootenay River basin; similarly Columbia Valley and Columbia Country have yet other meanings....Maybe "In British Columbia, "Columbia Basin" can be a reference to/synonymous with the Kootenay district" though that's rather uncitable I suppose.... Skookum1 ( talk) 01:25, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Just because the mention of the Kootenay Canal came up, thought I'd mention the Okanagan Canal (that might as well be a redirect to Okanogan River, though).....which as I think of it makes me wonder if it's the manmade watercourse through Penticton, or the canal-ized course of the Okanagan River from Okanagan Falls southwards; I rode along it last summer, from Oliver almost to Vaseux Lake, where teh Jackson Triggs Winery is; there's an almost-shaded bikepath along it, runs right into parkland in downtown Oliver and countinues southward; a poor, depleted stream, much of its water taken up by orchards and vinyards flanking it...there are programs to protect the remaining natural river....which is all fine and dandy for the OK River article, but what I'm mentioning it here in relation to is the history of canals in the Columbia system - there's Celilo Canal, I seem to recall, and the old and long-filled-in Columbia Canal - are there others? (the Sumas Canal is an exception, I mean shipping/navigation canals, not drainage canals) Got me thinking that the Columbia system/basin is the only one in BC that has canals...there was talk of them on the Lakes Route and also to connect the Shuswap to the Okanagan, even to canal-ize the middle Thompson, but only in the earliest days before people knew what trains were; there was talk about canals from teh Fraser to the Peace during the headdy days of railway expansion there, and making the Skeena navigable from the Nechako; but no industry to support the cost, only resource extraction so none got built, and of course canal-shipping was out-competed as a concept by railways....I can't think of a set of locks in British Columbia, in fact, whereas there's quite a few in Washington and Oregon, no? Skookum1 ( talk) 04:11, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
I am a slacker.
This is the rest of my peer review.
Arrrg, I just discovered that table that's been on the article forever, uncited, was added by an anon. IP quite some time ago. So I guess we'll need to find a reliable source for each river's discharge. I'm guessing it won't be too hard for the bigger rivers, but the littler ones might pose a bit of a challenge… - Pete ( talk) 20:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
I thought I had checked the stats on that table and found the discharge rates to be about right. Some of the basin sizes were not and I fixed those. I see the lack of sources for discharges, but I think the river pages should be sourced well. I'll check again when I have the chance. I was collecting this kind of info for various tributaries at User:Pfly/Sandbox2, but was haphazard about sourcing. Most of the larger tributaries have decent sourcing on their own pages. And yea, the USGS HUC cataloging units do not always correspond well to actual basin size. I think I fixed most of those in this chart. Sources for Canadian rivers was more difficult to find. I'll look into Skookum's find. And I am still thinking about someday adding some words about non-mainstem tributaries, at least mentioning some of the ones that stand out in terms of watershed and discharge, like the Owyhee River and Salmon River tributaries of the Snake. Might take me a while to get to though! Pfly ( talk) 03:06, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
I haven't explored it yet but at the Water Stewardship Branch's website 9the new retooled name for the Water Rights Branch) there's this tool, the BC Water REsources Atlas, from the "Search Water Rights section" of this [ge. I don't have time right now, I'll try a few major streams later and see what turns up; but all in all a useful site, mabye, for WP:Rivers and WP:BC....also note on the Atlas link the "British Columbia Water Resources Web Mapping Service" download and associated information. Skookum1 ( talk) 01:00, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm thinking we should round to the nearest 100 in the ft³/s column in the tributary table. I don't think the flow-rate numbers we have are generally more precise than this. Any thoughts? Finetooth ( talk) 03:35, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Thought I'd put a minor claim that I removed just now here on the talk page, in case anyone cares about it and wants to source it (although WikiBlame implies I added it myself, which is possible). After the sentence, Later that month, Vancouver encountered the American captain Robert Gray at the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I changed Gray reported that he had seen the entrance to the Columbia and planned to sail into it. to Gray reported that he had seen the entrance to the Columbia and had spent nine days trying but failing to enter. The only difference is whether Gray told Vancouver he was planning to try again or not. The source I cited is the most detailed one I know of about Vancouver's 1792 voyage. It even goes into the detail that Gray didn't tell Vancouver himself about the Columbia, but Puget and Menzies (who doubtlessly told Vancouver). But there's no mention of Gray saying he was planning to try again. In fact Gray spent the next several days tailing Vancouver, apparently suspicious of his intentions. Anyway, very minor point; just thought I'd put the deleted claim here. Pfly ( talk) 14:51, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Your instincts are good, Pfly. I've never seen the Kettle either, but the big number looked fishy. More checking shows that the original number, 2,930 cubic feet per second, used but not sourced for the Kettle River discharge, was probably right or at least very close. The source (Northwest Power Council) I cited for the much bigger number and which is also used on the Kettle River (Columbia River) page says, "The Kettle River has a mean annual flow of 12,000 cubic feet per second (cfs)." But when I checked the records this morning from the USGS gauge at Laurier, about 30 miles from the mouth, and calculated a 10-year average for 1930–39, I came up with about 2,500 cubic feet per second. It appears that the Northwest Power Council's published number is wildly wrong. Using a longer period of record, I'll run some more calculations and change the Kettle number and source it to the USGS. Finetooth ( talk) 19:02, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
And you beat me to the gauge problem on the John Day River, Pfly. I had noticed that the gauge at Service Creek was the one cited for the discharge rate and wondered why. You've partly fixed the problem by citing the McDonald Ferry gauge. But there's a further problem. The source you've cited gives the discharge for a single calendar year. Because of floods, droughts, and truly unusual events like the initial filling up of a huge new dam pool, using a single year of record for a discharge average is apt to be misleading. The complete list, 1906–2006, of mean annual flows at the McDonald Ferry gauge shows that they have varied on the John Day from less than 1,000 cubic feet per second to almost 5,000 cubic feet per second over the last 100 years. I've based my claims about the average flows of small creeks on similar gauge records by averaging the averages over as many years of record as were available. (I confess to using only 10 years on some of these Columbia tribs, but it would be even better to use the entire period of record. This is a somewhat tedious business using a hand-calculator and running the sums several times to check for mistakes.) By the way, I agree with User:Kmusser that the John Day belongs in our table. Finetooth ( talk) 19:45, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Kmusser's new map is amazing and wonderful. Finetooth ( talk) 02:22, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
There are two tasks we really need to attend to:
If we can get those two things sorted out, I'd say we're ready for a run at Featured article review. Thoughts? - Pete ( talk) 17:27, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>Ellen Morris Bishop, In Search of Ancient Oregon, p. 98, says, "Sediments from the erupting volcanoes and eroding remnants of the Blue Mountain island arc coursed down an ancestral Columbia River system, building a 2-mile-thick delta at its mouth. Today, those sediments form the low foothills of the Coast Range around Vernonia and Keasey." According to Bishop, the coastline during the Eocene, about 40 million years ago, lay just north of the Klamaths, but sediments from rivers other than the Columbia accumulated near what is now Coos Bay. On page 128 of the same book, Bishop says of the Miocene, about 24 million years ago, "Where Mount Hood rises today, the ancestral Columbia River followed a gentle valley." We could add more detail to the geology section and, for that matter, to the history section, as Skookum says, but we might be to the point where we have to delete something to make room for new material. The article is already on the longish side. Finetooth ( talk) 17:48, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I'll tie up any loose ends. - Pete ( talk) 18:02, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
I was looking up someting on the obscure Sikanni Chief River, part of the Peace-Mackenzie drainage, and found this great resource on all Arctic basins, the Saskatchewan-Churchill, Hudson's Bay, Yenisey, etc etc. Just dropping it here for refernce if someone happens to be looking for flow/discharge rates on Arctic rivers....pity there's not something similar for the Columbia, maybe I just haven't looked hard enough..... Skookum1 ( talk) 22:21, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
I thought I'd start a new section since the FA review one was getting so big. I'm OK with Egan. I think I missed out on the earlier discussion. Lots of people worked on this article for years before I parachuted in with my red pen. The layout looks better to me since you moved things around, Pete. Woody will still have to move down a notch to avoid bumping into a second-level head, although he doesn't have to shift to the right. The MoS says, "Do not place left-aligned images directly below subsection-level (=== or greater) headings, as this can disconnect the heading from the text it precedes. This can often be avoided by shifting left-aligned images down a paragraph or two." The three-image stack in "Navigation" is also a problem. On my screen, it causes the "Edit" button to veer into the text in "Opening the passage to Lewiston". That could be fixed by moving the Essayons image down into "Deeper shipping channel" and moving the log raft image down into "Opening the passage to Lewiston". Many other solutions are possible. I have no strong opinions about which is best. Finetooth ( talk) 19:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Forgive me for not knowing if this is in the article yet...I just found it and gave it a POV tag. it is important in the history and politics of hte basin BC-side. I'll let you guys read it and decide if/where it fits in.....it deoesnt' mention " downstream benefits" which really is a topic that needs an article, also....subtle and consternating....I'm not in the mood to explain right now..... Skookum1 ( talk) 17:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
I was looking at the 19th Century LoC archive for Harper's Magazine and found this. Takes some sorting-out to read as the OCR'ing sometimes makes two pages read as if one, but the original magazine pages are also available for viewing; anyway it has some nice poetic-travelogue kind of stuff on Puget Sound; that one's From the Fraser to the Columbia and it was the April 1884 issue; there was one on Oregon and Puget Sound, I'll try and find that link also. Some passages in it might have tidbits of information but quite often the writing is "of a certain kind" and make not-bad-stabs at describing certain landscapes and settings. Skookum1 ( talk) 01:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I just realized that we don't have anything about the 1855 Indian wars, or more generally, about the cultural clash and extermination that resulted as Americans and British began to settle the region in large numbers. There's a reasonable amount about the fishing conflict, but the deck had already been stacked against the natives once that became an issue. We need stuff about the Cayuse War, Whitman Massacre, Yakama War, Chief Joseph....also, the final paragraph in that section (about horses) should probably be incorporated into this effort, and moved up in the section for better chronological flow. - Pete ( talk) 22:39, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Yo folks; was cruisin' around looking up Fort Shepherd, which was located between Trail and the border after the Brits had to pull northward from Colville, and found this map on a Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program webpage (in the old days companies used to tout "conservation", now the buzzword is "compensation"...cute, huh?). There's a dam south of Revesltoke I'm unfamiliar with, can't see its name, but the classification of projects used might be worth considering for purposes here. There's a Fort Shepherd Conservancy Area or is that Fort Shepherd Conservation Area also in the Trail-Waneta area for which there's info on that site; along with a lot of other stuff - see this list of reports and their links page may prove useful. I particularly like the report titled "Kinbasket Moose Inventory".....is the number of moose munching on the Columbia's banks relevant? Perhaps it is....(the wildlife were here before the Indians, see above). Skookum1 ( talk) 03:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
I have no idea (and I don't want to study all the archived debates) whether anyone has pointed to this article before: Where Have All the Native Fish Gone? The Fate of Fish That Lewis and Clark Encountered on the Lower Columbia River And I also have no idea whether there is some useful information that could still be included in the article. I just thought I'd drop a note here, just have a look and decide whether you still want to further expand this article;-) -- X-Weinzar ( talk) 00:42, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I know http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Columbia_River&action=edit§ion=40that the refs cited say that Triple Divide Peak includes the drainage of the Arctic Ocean, but this is a major fallacy and should not be repeated in Wikipedia even if countless US textbooks and tourist/parks publications say it's the case. Take a look at a map, for pity's sake - Hudson Bay opens via Hudson and Frobisher Straits into Davis Strait, which is an extension of the Labrador Sea, which is an extension of the North Atlantic. The divide with the Arctic drainage is that between teh North Saskatchewan and the Athabasca, and nothing farther south than that; I know it's part of the mythology of the American Rockies, but it's wrong. I corrected it on Continental Divide of the Americas and here only, so far; please do not repeat it; maybe if Wikipedia starts getting the continent's geography right, American academic and popular publishing may follow suit. Yes, Hudson Bay is part of Canada's Subarctic - the norhtern part of it; but the mouth of the Nelson River (the outlet of the Saskatchewan) and James Bay are clearly Subarctic - and nowhere near the Arctic Ocean. This was my edit about this. Skookum1 ( talk) 06:09, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
Thinking about it more, it doesn't matter, for this article, whether Hudson Bay is or isn't defined as part of the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans. Hudson Bay's watershed is clearly important in its own right, historically and today, and seen as distinct from both the Arctic and Atlantic drainages. The two divides being discussed here separate the major watersheds of the Mackenzie, Nelson-Saskatchewan, and Mississippi-Missouri, which flow, respectively, to the Arctic Ocean proper, Hudson Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico (the Great Lakes watershed does not extend to the Continental Divide--I'll fix that now). When I helped write up the text about the divides, I tried to organize it in a kind of hierarchical fashion--ocean separating divides first, then divides that separate major seas, bays, gulfs, etc. But there is no need for the text to be ordered this way, or for explicit statements about "first order" ocean divides vs "lesser" divides. Given the special status of Hudson Bay, perhaps the text can be edited so that the bay is not said to be either Arctic or Atlantic. Or something could be said about the special status of Hudson Bay's drainage, which if nothing else had important historical meaning. Anyway, again I have little time, but thought perhaps we need not solve the issue of whether Hudson Bay is defined as part of the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans. Apart from the obviously important Continental Divide, all the others are just major divides of one sort or another. Finally, as I think I've said before, I'm not sure whether the divide section actually benefits the article. One could always decide to take scissors to it ruthlessly. (and, in reply to Skookum, despite its name the International Hydrographic Organization appears to focus on the ocean and seas, not rivers; and although based in France (Monaco actually) was apparently created by Britain and France cooperatively) Pfly ( talk) 07:46, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Hi gang; please see Talk:Okanagan_Basin#Content re some expansion I've made; this article needed cites, some of which are probably on this page; I've treated it as parallel to Columbia Basin but didn't know enough about Washington to write it properly; did my best on the basic expansion but it needs some US-side expansion; I think on Category talk:Okanagan Country someone from stateside made related comments, ahven't looked there in a while...without hte expansion and going with teh original author's content/context, it was otherwise liable for a merge with Okanagan, the main region article for that area within BC..... Skookum1 ( talk) 00:09, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
This page is something of a clearing-house for Columbia-related and Northwest-regional articles so I'm bringing this here; I just discovered that the article on teh Columbia Plateau is entitled Columbia River Plateau whilst the plateau-name is co-opted by the ecoregion series of articles; it may have been me, in fact, who added "(ecoregion)" as a dab to teh latter's title, as Iv'e done that with a few articles where WWF-classification articles had co-opted regular geographic terms for their own classification system. Essentially a move of Columbia River Plateau to Columbia Plateau is needed, as now the ecoregion article is properly disambiguated and labelled for what it is (i.e. so Columbia Plateau wasn't misrepresentative as a title). "Columbia River Plateau" is clunky, nobody uses it, and clearly "Colubmia Plateau"'s most common usage is the geographic sense, not the ecoregion. I guess I'll start a rename discussion at Talk:Columbia River Plateau; on a related subject I've added some Washington/Oregon content, as best I could, to Interior Plateau and maybe there should be some more Washington content on Thompson Plateau and Okanagan Highland....the ethnographic term " Northwest Plateau" had been a redlink until just now; I found it last night, but once I finish this post will redirect it to Interior Plateau as the definitions are near-identical, except the ethnographers, for unknown reasons, exclude the indigenous people of the Nechako Plateau who are classed in Sub-Arctic even though their southward kin are in the Plateau group...(i.e. the Tsilhqot'in and the extinct Nicola Athapaskans. Skookum1 ( talk) 13:20, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
The last few days I've been puttering around Russian America-related articles, including moving claims from many of them that there were Russian settlements in Oregon, Washington and BC (?!) and just now came across this in the entertaining and a bit peacockish Nikolai Rezanov article:
Sounds like that should be incorporated into this article somewhere, and in any related split-off, mabye the Capt Bob Gray article....the cite is the Encyclopedia Brittannica 11th Ed., which most of the Rezanov article seems based on.....Derek Pethick, by the way, makes an interesting speculation at the end of his The Nootka Connection that the Russians were free to take possession of Fort San Miguel (Nootka Sound) but chose not to; like everyone else, they were distracted by Bonaparte...how differently things might have turned out huh? Likewise had the RAC been more assertive re Fort Astoria at some point... Skookum1 ( talk) 21:03, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Columbia Plateau#name/redirect issue. And also Talk:Interior Plateau as to whether or not that term is used inclusive of the Columbia Plateau; I'm going to fix up the Interior Plateau article but wanted that clarified; because of the multi-state/province nature of the workign group here this seems to be the best place to raise this subject. Skookum1 ( talk) 15:13, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Karl, pfly and others who muck about with maps - LRDW Data Store Atlas of Canada datasets, free of charge. It and other very interesting things are in a directory of Data Custodians with the BC Govt (that title seems worth linking...like Gold Commissioner) on this page, which has all kinds of interesting stuff/access. Somewhere on this page I'll be approaching them about exactly what in the range of government databases is non-copyright; who knows there may be a ream of old photos that are archived online but technically either public dombain or which can be gdFL'd for public education; certainly the many pics from S. Holland's Landforms of British Columbia aren't quite at PD-Canada50 yet (publ. date was 1964) but there are govt photo collections that aren't part of the BC Archives site; I'm thinking remote areas, or in the case of this article maybe a good aerial of the Rocky Mountain Trench at Columbia Lake, or showing the curve of the Big Bend near Boat Encampment, or the four-way valley junction at Castlegar etc. Whatever, it's just hte MoF (Forests ministry) EMR (Energy Mines and Resources), highways and other departments have other databanks; a lot of it might be available, or be made to be available for "the public database", which is slowly what wikipedia seems to be turning into; a nexus of data-access and assembled info on name-a-topic....I think they might be quite happy to find a use for a lot of their unsaleable data; it's worth more as p.r..... Skookum1 ( talk) 00:21, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
[unindent]Just sharing with map-lovers; I wound up making Biogeoclmatic zones of British Columbia and found versions of this map, which I used to have wall-size in my old place and is downright one of the prettiest maps I've ever seen; this and other sites linked on that page are interactive, but this one allows you to zoom in and also use other layers, e.g. ownership, protected area, watersheds, political boundaries.....just a very nice bit of mapwork, likely using the technology in Basemap Online Store (which despite its name is still free-access, at least to look). Skookum1 ( talk) 03:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Rampart Dam#Fisheries.2C_IJC.2C_Canada and/or its FAC/GAC about international content re this '50s project, since dropped. I'm wondering if any of you here might have something to add or might know of any Canadian POV sources on it that you may have come across in international-rivers deliberation for this or related articles. Skookum1 ( talk) 16:56, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 |
I'm going to try to find some info on the old course of the river, where it followed through what is now the Wilson River valley when it flowed more straight into the Pacific (at least I remember hearing that before). Aboutmovies 00:45, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
- Pete 08:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
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help)Citation for "three times size of Great Pyramid" and some other stuff here. - Pete ( talk) 21:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I gotta stop finding these, the work never ends! But...this 4-part OPB series is awfully cool, and probably has lots of stuff that could be used for this article, and/or related ones... http://news.opb.org/series/2007/columbia/ - Pete ( talk) 07:26, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I've taken another look at Ruhrfisch's comments from his/her GA review, and believe all the most significant concerns have been met. Not every single concern, but the most important ones. I'm going to re-nominate, and leave a note to Ruhrfisch requesting that he/she revisit the review if time allows. Any thoughts? (I know there are still many improvements in progress, but I don't think any of them will hold this back from GA. I'm convinced by recent comments that FA may be a little further off.) - Pete ( talk) 18:32, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
NOTE: I removed several items that have been addressed. Ruhrfisch's full list is still preserved in /Archive3.
Congratulations and well done! Ruhrfisch ><>°° 21:53, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
turns out there's a Biodiversity Atlas underway funded by the BC Gov with the participation of Selkirk College. The main links off maps.gov.bc.ca didn't work but I found this which gives statistics on the Canadian length etc. and is a spinoff of the main project page. I don't have time to "mine" the article and add relevant contents here, but there was a need for Canadian-side citations/data so this should provide some of hte main stuff. Skookum1 ( talk) 16:48, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
i.e. the indigenous peoples section but in ref to Kennewick Man and other early-digs/finds; I'm mostly thinking of only one addition, but I don't know where to find the citation; so many hundred years ago, IIRC about 1500BP, maybe 3000BP, there was a pottery-using culture (presumably also pottery-making but finds are marginal); buried in alluvial ash or whatever, evidently wiped out by natural disaster. Bona fide but I don't know more than that tidbit, remembered from the CHINOOK-L listserve's discussions of various things. Oh, another aboriginal name for th river was Sesotkwa or Tsesotkwa, but nobody knew which language it was from; similarly when Simon Fraser started down the Fraser it was in the hopes to prove it was the Tacoutche Tesse, the Columbia; although once again in whose language I don't know, as that's not a Carrier-looking name (ko=river) nor is it Salishan (meen/een=river). The Chinookan name that turns up is Wihml - Wimhl? - with only one vowel; whether etymologically it means "big"+"river" I don't know. Oh, there's another "ancient" dig in the upper Columbia somewhere; might be in that diversity atlas or resources connected to it...basic drift is maybe there should be an archaoelogical section; won't be large but worthwhile.
I was looking for other stuff about elsewhere in BC and came across a Columbia Basin page on "Living Landscapes", a Royal BC Museum webproject; the Human history page looks like it has some interesting stuff but the natural history page looks like it has some material useful for this page, and for Columbia Basin. Also found this but you probably already know about it (?) Skookum1 ( talk) 15:36, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Although Columbia Lake is nominally considered the headwater of the Columbia, ultimately the source is the Columbia Icefield, hence the name (as also of Mount Columbia. Which little upper tributaries exactly come from the icefiled I'll have to look at later; I had a vicious stomach flu yesterday and have to mobilate myself for errands and some fresh air right now; though this was worth mentioning, maybe someone can stitch a mention into the article on it? Also found this which if you zoom in on BC is interesting, more for the way the Fraser basin was dealt with; but useful anyway perhaps. The diverted areas shown are, from N to S, the Nechako, Bridge and Cheakamus Rivers; only Nechako changes actual basins, though, so I don't see the point, i.e. there's other basin-to-same basin diversions...I'll have to read up the backinfo on this page to se what's up with that. Not that the Whatshan is a big deal, nor Alouette Lake nor Jones Lake; usually these national-level things are complied with only a loose understanding of BC geography/history, though.....(my stock complaint, no?)_ Skookum1 ( talk) 18:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
that line has always bothered me, although the exception to it I'm thinking of doesn't pass through the Cascades from one side to the other; it loops through it - the Skagit River; I guess it never crosses the divide of the Cascades, though....but is such a concept of a "divide" on a range pierced by, or spanning, the Columbia, even relevant? Skookum1 ( talk) 03:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm doing some bits of minor copyediting and am stuck on this sentence, from the Navigation section: The use of steamboats along the river, beginning in 1850... There is a footnote, to this timeline page, which phrases it "1850: Steamboats Columbia and Lot Whitcomb begin regular service on the Columbia River." The thing is there was a steamboat in regular service on the river before 1850, at least to Fort Vancouver: the Beaver (steamship), which arrived on the river in 1836. I thought about rewording the sentence The regular use of steamboats along the river..., but that isn't quite right either because the Beaver was in "regular use", even if its operations were not limited to the river. Anyway, I can't come up with a way to reword this bit, especially given the existence of the footnote, which does not mention the Beaver. So I'm just mentioning it here. It is a minor point to be sure, but symptomatic of an unfortunate US bias present in many history books and web pages. Pfly ( talk) 04:46, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
So, this page has been quiet for a while, but after the last burst of activity we got it to good article status with the notion that is was near or at feature article status. Anyone interested in working for FA? I've never been involved in such a thing and would find it interesting. And I don't mean right now per se, but over the next few months perhaps? I also don't know how to go about starting such a procedure, so I thought I'd just toss the idea out. If nothing else it would be interesting to see what criticisms come out in the process. Pfly ( talk) 06:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Also, while I'm at it, this talk page is getting long, perhaps we should archive most of it? Pfly ( talk) 06:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>Names are done. Dates are unlinked except those not in brackets in the "cite" family of citations. Those will be acceptable at FA and don't have to be fixed by hand. (The script does not touch them.) I need to think carefully before I tinker with the course description. Finetooth ( talk) 05:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
As someone who doesn't have trouble (usually) editing articles with lots of markup in them, I have to say that the infobox in this article is really enormous (in the edit mode), and slightly obnoxious. To preserve ease of editing, I think it might behoove us to move the infobox in to a separate template ala Template:ColumbiaRiverInfobox or the like. Any objections? Steven Walling (talk) 00:58, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
I have drafted a nomination for FA here: Talk:Columbia River/FAnom
Please take a look, and edit it as you see fit. I'd also love to see a number of us listed as co-nominators, so please add your name. Let's aim to submit this Wednesday. - Pete ( talk) 19:31, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>The half-dozen or so dabs are fixed. "Homestead" was one of them, and nothing on the dab seemed to explain what the word means in this context. My solution was to unlink. Finetooth ( talk) 23:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Good job with the dab checker..is that a program you download, or a script..? I submitted the PR nom, so if you want to ask Moni to take a look, go to it! I'm not sure if there's a policy forbidding links that require login -- it's something I've wondered before. The citations should be fine either way; if somebody insists that we unlink them, so be it (though in my personal view, that reduces the value of the citation). Re: Homestead, I think Homestead principle might suffice, but if you don't like it I'm fine with leaving it unlinked..or pointing to Wiktionary. - Pete ( talk) 01:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>I've written to Moni seeking her sage advice. Finetooth ( talk) 03:35, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
On first reading of this truly excellent article:
Massively good article, so I'm not even going to try changing any of that stuff, I'll leave this for your consideration. Great work! Franamax ( talk) 02:44, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
And just to pile on: could the sections be re-organized so that (new) "History" encompasses "Indigenous peoples" and "New waves of explorers". and (new) "Harnessing the river" contains "Damming the river", "Irrigation" and "Hydroelectricity"? This would mean splitting up the "Navigation" section, the first bit would go to History, "Opening the passage..." and "Deeper shipping channel" would go to "Harnessing...". Just an idea, it has a pretty good structure already. Franamax ( talk) 05:27, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I've completed the table based on the USGS and NRCan links I've mentioned above. I would regard the USGS data as definitive, except trumped by NRCan, which shows international figures. The table now needs a metric-equivalent column, n'est ce-pas?
I will invite scrutiny of my changes - for instance did I pick the right Sandy River? Also, there are some serious discrepancies with some of the linked articles - a conscientious editor would follow those up. And I haven't yet compared the USGS numbers with the existing ref's. An even more conscientious editor would infobox up the subsidiary articles with the necessaries - however, I suppose I am not that conscientious editor! Franamax ( talk) 04:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
By the way, I still have the problem I brought up, now in Archive 3. In Firefox the images overlap the tributary chart. This is on my Mac and the Windows Vista box I'm on right now. Just chekced IE and it looks good there. Here's a couple screenshots from the Windows Vista box. Firefox version 2.0.0.16 on Vista. The archive link has screenshots from Macintosh Firefox. Does anyone else have this issue? Pfly ( talk) 12:59, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I have removed these three images. I believe you're right that galleries are not encouraged, but there are exceptions. In my view, when there is a wealth of varied visual material related to an article, it's worth making an exception. You may recall that Hanford Site has a very interesting gallery, and made it through FA. However, I'm not sure these images are really that indispensable. I've pasted them at the right for y'all's perusal. - Pete ( talk) 00:29, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Your Deschutes photo is beautful, Pete, but adding it caused the map below to totally obscure the chart! I don't know why I have such problems with this section. But in any case, I changed the image placement from right to left, which makes the chart mostly readable, though not fully. Consider it a temporary fix-- I would like to add some text to this section about drainage basin sizes, and the added text might make image placing easier. I figure instead of troubleshooting the images now I should wait until the text I have in mind is added. Make sense? As for the new text I'm thinking of, it would just be something short about the chart: It lists the largest tributaries by discharge, but now that we have added drainage basin sizes to it, there may be the implication that these are the largest drainage basins, even if they are not ranked in order. In truth they are far from the largest basins (well, some of them are). So I thought it worth explaining that, and perhaps mentioning a few of the larger basins that are not on the chart. Like the ephemeral little Crab Creek has a 13,200 square mile basin! Also, some second order tributaries have drainage basins larger than most first order streams, which seems worth a quick mention. For example, the Owyhee River, a tributary of the Snake, has a basin 11,049 square miles large, which is larger than most first order tributaries excepting the 4 or 5 huge ones. Anyway, just to explain my less than idea image edit-- to be made better soon? Pfly ( talk) 18:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>I worked up the neighboring basin stuff last night and this morning and added it just now as per the discussion above. The prose might need some tweaking; I may have used the word "watershed" a few too many times. The new paragraph might give you some wiggle room with the graphics. I'll be looking for more stuff about the watershed. A basic description of the landforms should be possible. User:Northwesterner1's work on ecoregions might come in handy somewhere here. Finetooth ( talk) 19:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>Pfly, reading this fresh this morning, it seemed to make much better sense that it did late last night when my brain was filled with fog. I tweaked it slightly, clarifying the two different uses of "north" and merging some of the short paragraphs. Shorties are OK for emphasis but at FAC are deprecated by more editors than not, in my limited experience. My own view is that shorties will be hard to defend at FAC unless they are relatively rare. They function like bolding or italics. It's a matter of taste rather than any hard-and-fast rule I can point to. If others here disagree, please revert. Pete, as the main contributor, might have to decide this question for the article as a whole. Finetooth ( talk) 17:57, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>I added a fairly superficial bit about landforms, flora and fauna, just now with mention of a few of the more spectacular or important in each category. Make bold edits where you see fit, Franamax. Your ideas sound fine to me. Finetooth ( talk) 23:04, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
I found the recent FAC discussion of citations to subscription-only sources here. As a courtesy to readers, two different ways of handling these will probably be acceptable, as illustrated below. The phrase "subscription required" fits nicely into the format parameter in the "cite journal" template. I haven't tested the other members of the "cite" family, so I can't say for sure about all of them. I think the Newsbank links in this article all require a subscription or library card. I doubt that news articles have doi numbers, but I don't know for sure. Shall I attempt to add "subscription required" to the templates for the Newsbank group?
Finetooth ( talk) 19:21, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
The DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier and is one more way of keeping track of things. (Weasel alert!) I think we can forget about it here. I just tried out the "subscription required" in "cite news" for citation 73. Although the syntax is a little odd, it works and is probably OK. Finetooth ( talk) 20:48, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent> Yes, thanks a bunch. I see you fixed at least two of them, and I fixed one more. I've got to disappear for a while, and I may not get back to this until this evening. Finetooth ( talk) 18:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>I'm willing to declare this problem solved. If we spot any more that are only intermittently accessible, let's label them "subscription required" just to be safe. Finetooth ( talk) 04:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Franamax, for tracking down the Birchbark station. I took the day off from staring at my computer and went to get some photos of the lower Columbia Slough for a different article. Your note about the Birchbark station led me to this Environment Canada site, which has gauge information for the whole country. The Canadians have at least one other gauge on the Columbia that measures the discharge rate. It's station 08NB005 at Donald, not too far from the source at Columbia Lake. I haven't yet figured out how to get the average discharge rate from the available charts and tables, but I'm sure it's possible. If this sounds like fun to you, go for it. Finetooth ( talk) 23:35, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>That sounds like a good idea. As I kept finding and adding more stats, I became worried that the sheer volume of it would cause reader fatigue at the very beginning of an otherwise highly readable article. I think the existing "Discharge" subsection could reasonably be reduced to the first half of its first paragraph. I could move the rest to Columbia River flow. What do others think of this proposal? Finetooth ( talk) 23:25, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
This peer review discussion has been closed.
This article has been the focus of a broad collaboration for some time. There are
a number of us who have put in a lot of work to make the best article possible; we've been through two thorough GA reviews, and solicited feedback on a number of topics from a number of people, both on and off Wikipedia. We feel that the article is nearing readiness for a Featured article nomination, and would like a fresh set of eyes on it first. Thanks in advance for any feedback!
Pete (
talk) 20:55, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
I just happened to look at the dams map that's in the tribs section and glanced at the colour-key once I zoomed in on it; there needs to be a third colour for BC Hydro Dams; initially I was expecting that the treaty dams would be marked distinctly, but they're not. Brilliant I'm not so sure about, Waneta and Seven Mile are AFAIK I know BC Hydro, as are definitely Keenleyside, Revelstoke and Mica - and Duncan. BC Hydro ("Hydro" we call it usually) is a Crown Corporation, although half-privatized of late (Accenture runs the accounting and customer service division....) and so publicly-owned; it's the equivalent of "federally owned" in the US - hydroelectric resources in Canada are the jurisdiction of the provinces, not federal authority; the feds only got involved here because of the cross-border nature of the basin, they got involved in Quebec because of funding and land-claims issues. Brilliant used to be West Kootenay Power and Light, and all the little dams and powerhouses around the Kootenays were mostly part of that grid, though quite a few were privately owned. I'll check BC Hydro's list of installations and see if Brilliant's included; the whole WKPL infrastructure is integrated into Hydro now, I think; also it would be nice to see the Slocan and Similkameen included, since the Sanpoil and other small rivers are in there - and Trout Lake, no less, which I guess it's time to flesh out articles in that area (lots of ghost towns). BTW once again I'm impressed at hte thoroughness of the build-out of this article; the Fraser River article needs major work and is a skeleton by comparison; it's just been nominated, like this article, for teh hard-copy version of WP (v.0.7?).......has anyone here seen any resources that might have discharge rates for the Spillimacheen, Blaeberry, Beaver, Kicking Horse, Bush/Valencienees, Wood and Canoe? Some are quite large, I belive; .also there's another one that comes down from the Monashees opposite Revelstoke, at teh eastern outlet of Eagle Pass; it's not small....BC Basemap has been buried within a new site GeoBC, so can't check easily just now what it's called...... Skookum1 ( talk) 03:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
(outdent) Now that I look more closely at that map (link to the website it came from), I see a number of issues. First, some of the dam labels are missing or confusingly placed. Especially: Wells and Chief Joseph, Priest Rapids and Lower Monumental, Keenleyside and Brilliant, Swan Falls and Lucky Peak, and a number of others. Second, some dam dots have no label, like on the Kootenay, Spokane, and Pend Oreille Rivers. Third, I don't understand the criteria for including a dam on this map. It isn't dams whose primary purpose is hydroelectricity, as it includes Lucky Peak (flood control), and American Falls (irrigation), Duncan (storage), and the 4 lower Snake dams (navigation primary purpose). It isn't size, as it includes Milltown, which is only 12 meters tall, not even enough to warrant the standard term "large dam". Large dams seem to be normally defined as over 15 meters tall (and major as over 150 meters). The map shows a number of dams that are barely "large", like Box Canyon (32 m), American Falls (32 m), Swan Falls (33 m), CJ Strike (32 m), etc. And it doesn't show dams such as Mossyrock (185 m, hydroelectric, Cowlitz R), Detroit (141 m, hydroelectric, North Santiam River, Willamette basin), Round Butte (134 m, hydroelectric, Deschutes R), Owyhee (127 m, irrigation, Owyhee R), Swift and Yale (126 m & 98 m, hydroelectric, Lewis R). I got these stats from NPDP, which is US only. I browsed Skookum's links quickly but had trouble finding very large or major dams that aren't on the map, except perhaps Corra Linn and the Kootenay Canal project (75 m drop). Other dams that seem notable but are not on the map: Minidoka (Snake), Palisades (Snake), Cascade, Bonnington complex, Slocan, others. So, these three issues together make me want to make a new, better map. Of course I don't have the time, but perhaps I could do it anyway, eventually. Here's a few links about the various ways "large" and "major" dams seem to be defined: 1 (15 and 150 m, plus some other factors), 2 (50+ ft, and/or various factors), 3 (150+ m, and/or other factors for "major"), 4 (major again 150+ m plus other factors). Pfly ( talk) 21:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Skookum, do you think you could fill in the chart below? I get lost in all the details -- if we can get a clear spec of how to change the graphic, I can get to work. Also, are there any that wound up public, apart from the treaty dams? If so, what's the political history of that? I stuck in a paragraph in the Hydroelectric section about influential U.S. politicians like George Joseph and Charles McNary -- who on the BC side should be included? Did W. A. C. Bennett have something to do with this? Sorry, my knowledge of the BC side is pretty spotty.
As far as Kootenay-area politicians go in relation to hydro history I'm at a bit of a loss; it's not my part of hte province; no doubt West Kootenay & Light had their pet MLA (an MLA is like a state represesntative/senator, an MP is like a congressional representative) and it won't take much scratching to find out who. But the towering figure in BC history for hydroelectricity is without doubt WAC Bennett; the location of the Treaty Dams, and which ones were chosen/allowed, is entirely his legacy - he threatened to pull BC out of Confederation if he didn't get his way, no less, and both Ottawa and DC followed his drum and also paid the piper; unpopular as the Columbia deal was, he made it more palatable but cutting a deal that Ottawa would never have seen fit to, i.e. protecting BC inteests and revenues, as well as keeping too much of BC from being flooded out (other wise an expanded Columbia Lake would have made t he Purcells and Selkirks a Vancouver Island-sized "freshwater island", i.e. Kinbasket, Arrow, Koocanusa and Kootenay Lakes plus Columbia Lk would all be one big lake...if the US had had its way, which Ottawa was prepared to give them....not the first time BC got teh shaft from Ottawa, one reason for Bennett's popularity in standing up to the sell-out; people in living memory at the time had seen the debacle of the Alaska Panhandle, when BC lost half of its coastline (in contemporary eyes)). Boundary I'm not sure about, I'll check back on that site again; that's not hte same as Seven Mile is it? Waneta as noted previously is Teck Cominco owned, Brilliant is private with a contractor now expanding it, the otehrs are Hydro without doubt. But please note, BC Hydro is not Canadian-government owned, but BC-government owned, there's a big difference. I suggest maybe green or a different shade of blue than used for the river; BC Hydro's long-time colour scheme was a light green and sky blue.....elegantly set off by the "H" logo that is meant to look like two mountains reflecting in teh water; come to think of it maybe the company logo is PD - ? - and could be used as a symbol? Thing there, though, is taht the Treaty Dams kind of need their own colouration (Mica, Duncan, Keenleyside) and that colouration should be shared by Libby etc...... Skookum1 ( talk) 01:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
[undent]I added Seven Mile (BLUE/Hydro) and I see Boundary has City of Seattle.....are you sure that municipal and private shoudl be the same? For one thing, a power plant owned by a distant city, like Boundary, is a totally different thing thatn one owned by a local city, as with Bonnington's relationship with the City of Nelson. Tecko Cominco is local - i.e. the smelter in Trail so no rpoblem there. I'm wondering two things further - if FortisBC dams shouldnt' have their own colour - if the city of Seattle has more than one, or a few, then likewise - but the reasno for Fortis/WKPL having its own deisgnation is that there are/were so many projects, and the local infrastructure (until the Treaty) was dominated by them; I'm thinking a closeup showing the Kootenay-Pend Oreille-Columbia core region so all can be shown; the Lower Kootenay dams are too many to fit on the map at teh scale, and with the symbols shown. Skookum1 ( talk) 20:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
[undent]Might as well note here that there are separate categories for dams vs powerhouses - I think "power station" may be the catname, the implication being that the powerhouses (though in cases like the Bonningtons and such the dam and the power station are virtually the same building (not BC Hydro's style, by teh way, not even when they have room). So it makes sense for there to be a cat that includes non-immediately hydro dams as well as, well, reservoirs, because those are still dams; the presence of a power station would invoke the second category; one for dams, one for power plants - the latter being able to include things like Burrard Thermal and Trojan Nuclear Station (sorry don't konw it's official name); and the old coal-fired plants in some - many - mining towns.....BTW Karl the main BCGNIS index is searchable, and all dams are in it with their latlongs; you can also download the provincial gazetteer, or have it sent to you, via a link on the "free" section on www.geodatabc.com, or is it geodata.bc.ca, wherever http://maps.gov.bc.ca redirects to now; it's the full database of all placenames, including all dams and such.... Skookum1 ( talk) 06:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Kmusser: Counting the Lewis & Clark map, there are currently four maps on the article. That's a whole lot! If you're going to redo the one of the dams, maybe you can incorporate the features of one of the others, in a way that makes it possible to reduce the number of maps? The "course" map springs to mind, though possibly your general map could accommodate both cities (as it currently does) and dams… - Pete ( talk) 02:06, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
A quick note that this is still on my list of things to do, real life has just kept me from getting to it, will get there eventually. Kmusser ( talk) 12:34, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
How about we continue this discussion at Talk:List of dams in the Columbia River watershed, so as not to overburden this talk page, and those who are focusing on other topics? - Pete ( talk) 05:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Couple of things; one is I know what you mean by the Rocky Mountains here, i.e. including the Cabinet, Salish and US Selkirk Mountains; it's confusing for a Canadian reader as our conception of the Rockies ends at the Trench (though I know better, but them I'm not a tpyical Canuck reader...); it might be better to specify the ranges rather than using a generality that's US in context. Also re that, "Columbia Basin" in BC, when it's used to refer to BC only, would tend to mean only the direct basin of the Columbia itself, and not including the Kettle and Okanagan-Similkameen (escept in large formal planning bodies...but even that one I posted above somewhere is just hte Kootenays, plus the Boundary, no? Did it include theOkanagan?). Anyway just to note that the US usage of "Columbia Basin" is not the same as the BC one - when speaking outside of the pure geographic river-basin - in the same way that "Columbia Basin" means the region described in the US, in Canada/BC - if used - it would tend to mean the Kootenays only, or even excluding the Kootenay River basin; similarly Columbia Valley and Columbia Country have yet other meanings....Maybe "In British Columbia, "Columbia Basin" can be a reference to/synonymous with the Kootenay district" though that's rather uncitable I suppose.... Skookum1 ( talk) 01:25, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Just because the mention of the Kootenay Canal came up, thought I'd mention the Okanagan Canal (that might as well be a redirect to Okanogan River, though).....which as I think of it makes me wonder if it's the manmade watercourse through Penticton, or the canal-ized course of the Okanagan River from Okanagan Falls southwards; I rode along it last summer, from Oliver almost to Vaseux Lake, where teh Jackson Triggs Winery is; there's an almost-shaded bikepath along it, runs right into parkland in downtown Oliver and countinues southward; a poor, depleted stream, much of its water taken up by orchards and vinyards flanking it...there are programs to protect the remaining natural river....which is all fine and dandy for the OK River article, but what I'm mentioning it here in relation to is the history of canals in the Columbia system - there's Celilo Canal, I seem to recall, and the old and long-filled-in Columbia Canal - are there others? (the Sumas Canal is an exception, I mean shipping/navigation canals, not drainage canals) Got me thinking that the Columbia system/basin is the only one in BC that has canals...there was talk of them on the Lakes Route and also to connect the Shuswap to the Okanagan, even to canal-ize the middle Thompson, but only in the earliest days before people knew what trains were; there was talk about canals from teh Fraser to the Peace during the headdy days of railway expansion there, and making the Skeena navigable from the Nechako; but no industry to support the cost, only resource extraction so none got built, and of course canal-shipping was out-competed as a concept by railways....I can't think of a set of locks in British Columbia, in fact, whereas there's quite a few in Washington and Oregon, no? Skookum1 ( talk) 04:11, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
I am a slacker.
This is the rest of my peer review.
Arrrg, I just discovered that table that's been on the article forever, uncited, was added by an anon. IP quite some time ago. So I guess we'll need to find a reliable source for each river's discharge. I'm guessing it won't be too hard for the bigger rivers, but the littler ones might pose a bit of a challenge… - Pete ( talk) 20:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
I thought I had checked the stats on that table and found the discharge rates to be about right. Some of the basin sizes were not and I fixed those. I see the lack of sources for discharges, but I think the river pages should be sourced well. I'll check again when I have the chance. I was collecting this kind of info for various tributaries at User:Pfly/Sandbox2, but was haphazard about sourcing. Most of the larger tributaries have decent sourcing on their own pages. And yea, the USGS HUC cataloging units do not always correspond well to actual basin size. I think I fixed most of those in this chart. Sources for Canadian rivers was more difficult to find. I'll look into Skookum's find. And I am still thinking about someday adding some words about non-mainstem tributaries, at least mentioning some of the ones that stand out in terms of watershed and discharge, like the Owyhee River and Salmon River tributaries of the Snake. Might take me a while to get to though! Pfly ( talk) 03:06, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
I haven't explored it yet but at the Water Stewardship Branch's website 9the new retooled name for the Water Rights Branch) there's this tool, the BC Water REsources Atlas, from the "Search Water Rights section" of this [ge. I don't have time right now, I'll try a few major streams later and see what turns up; but all in all a useful site, mabye, for WP:Rivers and WP:BC....also note on the Atlas link the "British Columbia Water Resources Web Mapping Service" download and associated information. Skookum1 ( talk) 01:00, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm thinking we should round to the nearest 100 in the ft³/s column in the tributary table. I don't think the flow-rate numbers we have are generally more precise than this. Any thoughts? Finetooth ( talk) 03:35, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Thought I'd put a minor claim that I removed just now here on the talk page, in case anyone cares about it and wants to source it (although WikiBlame implies I added it myself, which is possible). After the sentence, Later that month, Vancouver encountered the American captain Robert Gray at the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I changed Gray reported that he had seen the entrance to the Columbia and planned to sail into it. to Gray reported that he had seen the entrance to the Columbia and had spent nine days trying but failing to enter. The only difference is whether Gray told Vancouver he was planning to try again or not. The source I cited is the most detailed one I know of about Vancouver's 1792 voyage. It even goes into the detail that Gray didn't tell Vancouver himself about the Columbia, but Puget and Menzies (who doubtlessly told Vancouver). But there's no mention of Gray saying he was planning to try again. In fact Gray spent the next several days tailing Vancouver, apparently suspicious of his intentions. Anyway, very minor point; just thought I'd put the deleted claim here. Pfly ( talk) 14:51, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Your instincts are good, Pfly. I've never seen the Kettle either, but the big number looked fishy. More checking shows that the original number, 2,930 cubic feet per second, used but not sourced for the Kettle River discharge, was probably right or at least very close. The source (Northwest Power Council) I cited for the much bigger number and which is also used on the Kettle River (Columbia River) page says, "The Kettle River has a mean annual flow of 12,000 cubic feet per second (cfs)." But when I checked the records this morning from the USGS gauge at Laurier, about 30 miles from the mouth, and calculated a 10-year average for 1930–39, I came up with about 2,500 cubic feet per second. It appears that the Northwest Power Council's published number is wildly wrong. Using a longer period of record, I'll run some more calculations and change the Kettle number and source it to the USGS. Finetooth ( talk) 19:02, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
And you beat me to the gauge problem on the John Day River, Pfly. I had noticed that the gauge at Service Creek was the one cited for the discharge rate and wondered why. You've partly fixed the problem by citing the McDonald Ferry gauge. But there's a further problem. The source you've cited gives the discharge for a single calendar year. Because of floods, droughts, and truly unusual events like the initial filling up of a huge new dam pool, using a single year of record for a discharge average is apt to be misleading. The complete list, 1906–2006, of mean annual flows at the McDonald Ferry gauge shows that they have varied on the John Day from less than 1,000 cubic feet per second to almost 5,000 cubic feet per second over the last 100 years. I've based my claims about the average flows of small creeks on similar gauge records by averaging the averages over as many years of record as were available. (I confess to using only 10 years on some of these Columbia tribs, but it would be even better to use the entire period of record. This is a somewhat tedious business using a hand-calculator and running the sums several times to check for mistakes.) By the way, I agree with User:Kmusser that the John Day belongs in our table. Finetooth ( talk) 19:45, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Kmusser's new map is amazing and wonderful. Finetooth ( talk) 02:22, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
There are two tasks we really need to attend to:
If we can get those two things sorted out, I'd say we're ready for a run at Featured article review. Thoughts? - Pete ( talk) 17:27, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
<outdent>Ellen Morris Bishop, In Search of Ancient Oregon, p. 98, says, "Sediments from the erupting volcanoes and eroding remnants of the Blue Mountain island arc coursed down an ancestral Columbia River system, building a 2-mile-thick delta at its mouth. Today, those sediments form the low foothills of the Coast Range around Vernonia and Keasey." According to Bishop, the coastline during the Eocene, about 40 million years ago, lay just north of the Klamaths, but sediments from rivers other than the Columbia accumulated near what is now Coos Bay. On page 128 of the same book, Bishop says of the Miocene, about 24 million years ago, "Where Mount Hood rises today, the ancestral Columbia River followed a gentle valley." We could add more detail to the geology section and, for that matter, to the history section, as Skookum says, but we might be to the point where we have to delete something to make room for new material. The article is already on the longish side. Finetooth ( talk) 17:48, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I'll tie up any loose ends. - Pete ( talk) 18:02, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
I was looking up someting on the obscure Sikanni Chief River, part of the Peace-Mackenzie drainage, and found this great resource on all Arctic basins, the Saskatchewan-Churchill, Hudson's Bay, Yenisey, etc etc. Just dropping it here for refernce if someone happens to be looking for flow/discharge rates on Arctic rivers....pity there's not something similar for the Columbia, maybe I just haven't looked hard enough..... Skookum1 ( talk) 22:21, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
I thought I'd start a new section since the FA review one was getting so big. I'm OK with Egan. I think I missed out on the earlier discussion. Lots of people worked on this article for years before I parachuted in with my red pen. The layout looks better to me since you moved things around, Pete. Woody will still have to move down a notch to avoid bumping into a second-level head, although he doesn't have to shift to the right. The MoS says, "Do not place left-aligned images directly below subsection-level (=== or greater) headings, as this can disconnect the heading from the text it precedes. This can often be avoided by shifting left-aligned images down a paragraph or two." The three-image stack in "Navigation" is also a problem. On my screen, it causes the "Edit" button to veer into the text in "Opening the passage to Lewiston". That could be fixed by moving the Essayons image down into "Deeper shipping channel" and moving the log raft image down into "Opening the passage to Lewiston". Many other solutions are possible. I have no strong opinions about which is best. Finetooth ( talk) 19:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Forgive me for not knowing if this is in the article yet...I just found it and gave it a POV tag. it is important in the history and politics of hte basin BC-side. I'll let you guys read it and decide if/where it fits in.....it deoesnt' mention " downstream benefits" which really is a topic that needs an article, also....subtle and consternating....I'm not in the mood to explain right now..... Skookum1 ( talk) 17:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
I was looking at the 19th Century LoC archive for Harper's Magazine and found this. Takes some sorting-out to read as the OCR'ing sometimes makes two pages read as if one, but the original magazine pages are also available for viewing; anyway it has some nice poetic-travelogue kind of stuff on Puget Sound; that one's From the Fraser to the Columbia and it was the April 1884 issue; there was one on Oregon and Puget Sound, I'll try and find that link also. Some passages in it might have tidbits of information but quite often the writing is "of a certain kind" and make not-bad-stabs at describing certain landscapes and settings. Skookum1 ( talk) 01:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I just realized that we don't have anything about the 1855 Indian wars, or more generally, about the cultural clash and extermination that resulted as Americans and British began to settle the region in large numbers. There's a reasonable amount about the fishing conflict, but the deck had already been stacked against the natives once that became an issue. We need stuff about the Cayuse War, Whitman Massacre, Yakama War, Chief Joseph....also, the final paragraph in that section (about horses) should probably be incorporated into this effort, and moved up in the section for better chronological flow. - Pete ( talk) 22:39, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Yo folks; was cruisin' around looking up Fort Shepherd, which was located between Trail and the border after the Brits had to pull northward from Colville, and found this map on a Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program webpage (in the old days companies used to tout "conservation", now the buzzword is "compensation"...cute, huh?). There's a dam south of Revesltoke I'm unfamiliar with, can't see its name, but the classification of projects used might be worth considering for purposes here. There's a Fort Shepherd Conservancy Area or is that Fort Shepherd Conservation Area also in the Trail-Waneta area for which there's info on that site; along with a lot of other stuff - see this list of reports and their links page may prove useful. I particularly like the report titled "Kinbasket Moose Inventory".....is the number of moose munching on the Columbia's banks relevant? Perhaps it is....(the wildlife were here before the Indians, see above). Skookum1 ( talk) 03:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
I have no idea (and I don't want to study all the archived debates) whether anyone has pointed to this article before: Where Have All the Native Fish Gone? The Fate of Fish That Lewis and Clark Encountered on the Lower Columbia River And I also have no idea whether there is some useful information that could still be included in the article. I just thought I'd drop a note here, just have a look and decide whether you still want to further expand this article;-) -- X-Weinzar ( talk) 00:42, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I know http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Columbia_River&action=edit§ion=40that the refs cited say that Triple Divide Peak includes the drainage of the Arctic Ocean, but this is a major fallacy and should not be repeated in Wikipedia even if countless US textbooks and tourist/parks publications say it's the case. Take a look at a map, for pity's sake - Hudson Bay opens via Hudson and Frobisher Straits into Davis Strait, which is an extension of the Labrador Sea, which is an extension of the North Atlantic. The divide with the Arctic drainage is that between teh North Saskatchewan and the Athabasca, and nothing farther south than that; I know it's part of the mythology of the American Rockies, but it's wrong. I corrected it on Continental Divide of the Americas and here only, so far; please do not repeat it; maybe if Wikipedia starts getting the continent's geography right, American academic and popular publishing may follow suit. Yes, Hudson Bay is part of Canada's Subarctic - the norhtern part of it; but the mouth of the Nelson River (the outlet of the Saskatchewan) and James Bay are clearly Subarctic - and nowhere near the Arctic Ocean. This was my edit about this. Skookum1 ( talk) 06:09, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
Thinking about it more, it doesn't matter, for this article, whether Hudson Bay is or isn't defined as part of the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans. Hudson Bay's watershed is clearly important in its own right, historically and today, and seen as distinct from both the Arctic and Atlantic drainages. The two divides being discussed here separate the major watersheds of the Mackenzie, Nelson-Saskatchewan, and Mississippi-Missouri, which flow, respectively, to the Arctic Ocean proper, Hudson Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico (the Great Lakes watershed does not extend to the Continental Divide--I'll fix that now). When I helped write up the text about the divides, I tried to organize it in a kind of hierarchical fashion--ocean separating divides first, then divides that separate major seas, bays, gulfs, etc. But there is no need for the text to be ordered this way, or for explicit statements about "first order" ocean divides vs "lesser" divides. Given the special status of Hudson Bay, perhaps the text can be edited so that the bay is not said to be either Arctic or Atlantic. Or something could be said about the special status of Hudson Bay's drainage, which if nothing else had important historical meaning. Anyway, again I have little time, but thought perhaps we need not solve the issue of whether Hudson Bay is defined as part of the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans. Apart from the obviously important Continental Divide, all the others are just major divides of one sort or another. Finally, as I think I've said before, I'm not sure whether the divide section actually benefits the article. One could always decide to take scissors to it ruthlessly. (and, in reply to Skookum, despite its name the International Hydrographic Organization appears to focus on the ocean and seas, not rivers; and although based in France (Monaco actually) was apparently created by Britain and France cooperatively) Pfly ( talk) 07:46, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Hi gang; please see Talk:Okanagan_Basin#Content re some expansion I've made; this article needed cites, some of which are probably on this page; I've treated it as parallel to Columbia Basin but didn't know enough about Washington to write it properly; did my best on the basic expansion but it needs some US-side expansion; I think on Category talk:Okanagan Country someone from stateside made related comments, ahven't looked there in a while...without hte expansion and going with teh original author's content/context, it was otherwise liable for a merge with Okanagan, the main region article for that area within BC..... Skookum1 ( talk) 00:09, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
This page is something of a clearing-house for Columbia-related and Northwest-regional articles so I'm bringing this here; I just discovered that the article on teh Columbia Plateau is entitled Columbia River Plateau whilst the plateau-name is co-opted by the ecoregion series of articles; it may have been me, in fact, who added "(ecoregion)" as a dab to teh latter's title, as Iv'e done that with a few articles where WWF-classification articles had co-opted regular geographic terms for their own classification system. Essentially a move of Columbia River Plateau to Columbia Plateau is needed, as now the ecoregion article is properly disambiguated and labelled for what it is (i.e. so Columbia Plateau wasn't misrepresentative as a title). "Columbia River Plateau" is clunky, nobody uses it, and clearly "Colubmia Plateau"'s most common usage is the geographic sense, not the ecoregion. I guess I'll start a rename discussion at Talk:Columbia River Plateau; on a related subject I've added some Washington/Oregon content, as best I could, to Interior Plateau and maybe there should be some more Washington content on Thompson Plateau and Okanagan Highland....the ethnographic term " Northwest Plateau" had been a redlink until just now; I found it last night, but once I finish this post will redirect it to Interior Plateau as the definitions are near-identical, except the ethnographers, for unknown reasons, exclude the indigenous people of the Nechako Plateau who are classed in Sub-Arctic even though their southward kin are in the Plateau group...(i.e. the Tsilhqot'in and the extinct Nicola Athapaskans. Skookum1 ( talk) 13:20, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
The last few days I've been puttering around Russian America-related articles, including moving claims from many of them that there were Russian settlements in Oregon, Washington and BC (?!) and just now came across this in the entertaining and a bit peacockish Nikolai Rezanov article:
Sounds like that should be incorporated into this article somewhere, and in any related split-off, mabye the Capt Bob Gray article....the cite is the Encyclopedia Brittannica 11th Ed., which most of the Rezanov article seems based on.....Derek Pethick, by the way, makes an interesting speculation at the end of his The Nootka Connection that the Russians were free to take possession of Fort San Miguel (Nootka Sound) but chose not to; like everyone else, they were distracted by Bonaparte...how differently things might have turned out huh? Likewise had the RAC been more assertive re Fort Astoria at some point... Skookum1 ( talk) 21:03, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Columbia Plateau#name/redirect issue. And also Talk:Interior Plateau as to whether or not that term is used inclusive of the Columbia Plateau; I'm going to fix up the Interior Plateau article but wanted that clarified; because of the multi-state/province nature of the workign group here this seems to be the best place to raise this subject. Skookum1 ( talk) 15:13, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Karl, pfly and others who muck about with maps - LRDW Data Store Atlas of Canada datasets, free of charge. It and other very interesting things are in a directory of Data Custodians with the BC Govt (that title seems worth linking...like Gold Commissioner) on this page, which has all kinds of interesting stuff/access. Somewhere on this page I'll be approaching them about exactly what in the range of government databases is non-copyright; who knows there may be a ream of old photos that are archived online but technically either public dombain or which can be gdFL'd for public education; certainly the many pics from S. Holland's Landforms of British Columbia aren't quite at PD-Canada50 yet (publ. date was 1964) but there are govt photo collections that aren't part of the BC Archives site; I'm thinking remote areas, or in the case of this article maybe a good aerial of the Rocky Mountain Trench at Columbia Lake, or showing the curve of the Big Bend near Boat Encampment, or the four-way valley junction at Castlegar etc. Whatever, it's just hte MoF (Forests ministry) EMR (Energy Mines and Resources), highways and other departments have other databanks; a lot of it might be available, or be made to be available for "the public database", which is slowly what wikipedia seems to be turning into; a nexus of data-access and assembled info on name-a-topic....I think they might be quite happy to find a use for a lot of their unsaleable data; it's worth more as p.r..... Skookum1 ( talk) 00:21, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
[unindent]Just sharing with map-lovers; I wound up making Biogeoclmatic zones of British Columbia and found versions of this map, which I used to have wall-size in my old place and is downright one of the prettiest maps I've ever seen; this and other sites linked on that page are interactive, but this one allows you to zoom in and also use other layers, e.g. ownership, protected area, watersheds, political boundaries.....just a very nice bit of mapwork, likely using the technology in Basemap Online Store (which despite its name is still free-access, at least to look). Skookum1 ( talk) 03:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Rampart Dam#Fisheries.2C_IJC.2C_Canada and/or its FAC/GAC about international content re this '50s project, since dropped. I'm wondering if any of you here might have something to add or might know of any Canadian POV sources on it that you may have come across in international-rivers deliberation for this or related articles. Skookum1 ( talk) 16:56, 5 March 2009 (UTC)