In 1956, James Lee Hansen began making molds and recording many of the petroglyphic prehistoric carvings in the are of the Columbia River Gorge that was inundated by the Dalles and John Day Dams constructed by the Army Corp of Engineers in the 1950’s. Many of these recorded images were gifted to “The Oregon Museum of Science and History” in Portland, Oregon. This project was completed with Dr. Carl Heller and James Haseltine.
By Calley Hair, Columbian staff writer
In the 1950s, the U.S. government announced funding for The Dalles Dam, which would ultimately inundate the site with slackwater and submerge generations of tribal art. An excavation effort led by the region’s tribes, in conjunction with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, recovered around 40 petroglyphs before the dam flooded the area in 1957.
The pieces are estimated to be up to 10,000 years old, the article reports. They came from Spedis Valley, just upstream of what would eventually be The Dalles Dam, and were excavated from the rock face by Vancouver sculptor James Hansen and his crew.
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