PORT ANGELES — Few creations better mark Port Angeles’ past than the 93-year-old Elwha Dam, which turns the Elwha River’s strength into electricity.
About five miles from the river’s mouth, the Elwha Dam spans 420 feet across a verdant canyon and soars over the river’s blue-green waters, where the shadows of large salmon sway beneath the surface.
It’s these fish that have led to the planned removal of the 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam and a second dam upstream on the river, the 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon Dam to restore the river to its natural ecosystem.
It will be the biggest dam-removal project in history.
Beginning in 2008, the dams will be dismantled in stages over 2½ years, eventually reopening 70 miles of prime salmon and steelhead spawning habitat.
The cost: about $182 million.
As part of Saturday and Sunday’s Port Angeles Heritage Weekend, people were allowed to tour the Elwha Dam and its powerhouse.
The original 1910-era gauges and the massive, looming turbines still control the flow of water through the dam.
“It reminds me of something from my childhood,” said Lois Draper of Agnew as she toured the dam’s operation room and viewed the round, vintage gauges mounted on the walls above modern-day computers.
The dam produces about 197,000 megawatts of power per year, which is enough to power about 97,000 homes annually, said Rick Parker, Elwha project coordinator with the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which currently operates the Elwha and the Glines Canyon dams.
On one day in 1948, the dam saw 30,500 cubic feet per second of water pound through the dam, the largest amount ever recorded, Parker said as he led the tour.
More recently, on a day in early 2002, the flow was recorded at 28,800 cubic feet per second.
On Saturday, about 970 cubic feet per second flowed through the dam.