Kettle Falls

[1] Kettle Falls was inundated in 1940, as the waters of the reservoir Lake Roosevelt rose behind Grand Coulee Dam, permanently flooding the site.

Salish-speaking people arrived about two thousand years ago, and gradually the falls became the center of an extensive network of Native American trade based on a salmon economy.

[3] Native peoples came from coastal areas in the west and from the Great Plains in the east to fish, trade, and socialize with the bands of the Columbia River Plateau.

The waters behind the dam rose 380 feet (120 m), flooding more than 21,000 acres (85 km2) of prime bottomland along the river where native peoples lived, as well as the original town of Kettle Falls.

[3][5] In June 1940, an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people mourned the falls at a "Ceremony of Tears" organized by the Colvilles and attended by representatives of the Yakama, Spokane, Nez Perce, Flathead, Blackfeet, Coeur d'Alene, Tulalip, and Pend d'Oreille tribes.

In addition to submerging the falls, Grand Coulee permanently blocked anadromous fish from traveling upriver, ending salmon and steelhead migration in the upper Columbia River Basin.