It’s a sunny morning at Willamette Falls in Oregon City, Oregon, and despite being many miles inland, a sea lion is fattening up on a diet of salmon and steelhead. As birds circle overhead, the sound of the horseshoe-shaped falls—carrying rain and Cascade snowmelt from the Willamette River to the Columbia River and the Pacific—is thunderous.
“It’s a good day to view the falls,” says Carlotta Collette, a councilor with Metro, the Portland metro area’s regional government, as we stand on a viewing platform that will be part of the future Willamette Falls Riverwalk. “It’s almost always a good day to view the falls. And we have an opportunity right now to share it for the first time in 150 years.”
