A Call to Arms to Save California’s Rivers
In 1967, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to build an enormous dam just above the confluence of the Eel River and the Middle Fork Eel River at Dos Rios. The Dos Rios Dam would have been 730 feet tall to create a reservoir that covered 110,000 acres of land, including Round Valley, the Middle Fork Eel River watershed’s primary agricultural area, the town of Covelo and the Round Valley Indian Reservation.
The project was done in by outcry from local residents and the intervention of Governor Ronald Reagan. Upset that the Corps of Engineers hadn’t offered any alternatives to the massive dam, Reagan withheld his approval in 1969 and expressed sympathies for the plight of the Indian ranchers of Round Valley, whose property and ancestral burial grounds would have been flooded. “Enough treaties had already been broken with the Indians,” said Reagan.
This narrow defeat was a call to arms for CalTrout’s eventual founding members, who had styled themselves “The Committee of Two Million” (CCO2M) during the Dos Rios fight. While they had eked out a victory on the Eel River, the writing was on the wall. The threat to California’s rivers was real, and saving those rivers would take organization and vigilance.
#3 in our 50th Anniversary Series
