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Rivers slice through time and place. The Snake River has carved deep canyons into the landscape while it has cut through more than 10,000 years of human history. During that time it has provided many of life's essentials for those living near it: food, water, protection, transportation, and power. Studying a river like the Snake reveals much about people and place and changing times. As historian Donald Worster has said, To write history without putting any water in it is to leave out a large part of the story. Human experience has not been so dry as that. In western Wyoming, high mountain peaks shed water into creeks with names like Fox, Wolverine, Rodent, Crooked, Sickle, and Basin. Their union produces the Snake River. The Snake flows west to the Lewis, then turns south into the Jackson Hole country. Paralleling the Teton Range, it gains additional energy from the Gros Ventre and Hoback rivers before entering Idaho. Moving west, in the days before dams and irrigation diversions, it dropped precipitously in a series of spectacular waterfalls, some of which lent their names to cities: Idaho Falls, American Falls, Twin Falls, taller-than-Niagara/Shoshone Falls, Augure Falls, and Salmon Falls, all the time gathering force from the accumulated waters of the Blackfoot, Portneuf, Raft, Big and Little Wood, and Bruneau rivers. Reaching Idaho's western border, it juts briefly into Oregon, then turns abruptly north, forming the boundary between those two states, taking on the waters of the Owyhee, Malheur, Burnt, Powder, Boise, Payette, and Weiser rivers. Flowing now with the force of one of the world's great streams, the Snake hurtles through Hells Canyon, the deepest and narrowest gorge in North America. The Salmon and the Grande Ronde enter, and the river becomes the boundary between Idaho and Washington.</div>
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Defense Technical Information Center</div>
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