Mark your calendars for this year’s Columbia and Snake River Lock and Dam tour.
Join the Upper Mississippi Waterway Association (UMWA) June 22-28, 2025, to tour and explore the Columbia and Snake River Lock and Dam system in a collaboration with stakeholders of those rivers and the Upper Mississippi.
The event will promote the needs and importance of both inland waterways and provide updates about the issues and opportunities of the Columbia and Snake rivers.
UMWA is working to attract and bring along media to attend, legislators and other Upper Mississippi stakeholders to learn more about this river system, while discussing the needs of the Upper Mississippi to educate influencers to support UMWA work in maintaining the very important working waterway.
The experience will include (tentative):
A jet boat tour through the Lower Granite Dam, where the river level drops 100′ from one side to the other, one of the greatest changes in a U.S. river. Continuing with an informational tour to view research work, and the inner workings of the dam where fingerling salmon first enter and adult spawning salmon last cross between the ocean and their hatching/spawning habitat.
Next is the Ice Harbor and Bonneville Dams – the largest power generation and the last dam for fingerlings and the first dam for adult salmon.
Attendees will meet with Tidewater and Shaver Transportation as they demonstrate, from an on-the-river perspective, life navigating barges on these working waterways.
With the tours, UMWA hopes to arrange dinner cruises with UMWA member American Cruise Lines and another in Portland, Ore., to view the Willamette and Columbia rivers.
In Astoria, Ore., the plan is to learn about the issues and the breath-holding challenges that river and bar pilots experience, along with a planned maritime museum visit.
Although the schedule is full, there will be time to enjoy Washington and Oregon wines, local grown food and to immerse in the viticulture, horticulture, agriculture and recreation that relies upon locks and dams and irrigation found along the river system. Stops at a grain elevator to discuss barge loading, an export elevator and visits to vineyards, and Hood River to see how recreation and commerce utilize the rivers together are also planned.
More information on trip cost and final details are coming soon.
Mark your calendars and let Gary Williams or Zac Morris know through the UMWA contact form your interest in attending this unique river access opportunity at.