Sisters folks tour Whychus Creek

Jim Anderson, Correspondent | Last updated Aug 05, 2008 12:0pm0

Jim Anderson count

Maret Pajutee, left, explains some of the history and geology of Whychus Creek. A large group took a walk on the wild side of Sisters’ familiar waterway.

Most folks in Sisters are familiar with Whychus Creek as the stream that meanders through Creekside City Park. Fewer are familiar with the reaches of the creek that gain the creek federal "Wild and Scenic" designation.

On Tuesday, July 29, Bill Anthony, Sisters District Ranger and Maret Pajutee, District Ecologist guided about 25 concerned citizens on a half-day "Show Me" trip into the wilder side of the Whychus Creek watershed.

The trip began with an overview of what the Forest Service hopes to accomplish by creating a Wild and Scenic management plan to protect the unique qualities of Whychus, and then progressed to a prehistoric cultural site just out of town.

According to oral history from the Warm Springs People, rock overhang shelters along the creek were likely used by early inhabitants as they traveled along the Whychus corridor into the Three Sisters in search of obsidian for tool-making. For that reason, Whychus (an Indian word that means "The Place We Crossed The Waters") has been identified as an important cultural site by native peoples.

But you'd never know that to see it today.

Garbage-filled fire rings along with a spray-painted graffiti message that appears to have been left by the "Class of 97" have defaced one rock shelter.

While both Anthony and Pajutee are quick to give credit to the young people of the Sisters community for volunteering hundreds of hours cleaning up such sites, this one seemed to have escaped their attention.

Pajutee explained, "This is a favorite local party spot and it's a never-ending job for our field rangers and caring public to haul off the beer cans, furniture, shotgun casings, and garbage that appear after a wild night."

If the Wild and Scenic management plan includes limiting vehicle access or interpretive signs in these sensitive areas, the sites might be treated more respectfully.

The lower reaches of Whychus Creek outside the designated area will remain a beautiful irrigation ditch; it's under the jurisdiction of the Oregon Water Resources Department.

Over the last 10 years, however, several important events have taken place to conserve the water of Whychus Creek to re-establish the ancient pre-irrigation fish habitat.

The Permanent Water Transfer of 1.81 cfs in the Smith-Barclay Project started the reclamation efforts for wildlife. The Deschutes River Conservancy, Oregon Water Trust, Deschutes County, Oregon Water Resources Department and Upper Deschutes Watershed Council provided money for the purchases. That action was followed up by Water Rights from 15 acres of land that were purchased by the Deschutes River Conservancy and the Oregon Water Trust and put in-stream.

The Thompson Ditch project added 2.12 cfs, while the Three Sisters Irrigation District's canal piping, plus ground water pumping, added approximately 13 cfs.

Indian Ford and Pole Creek Leasing withdrawals put an additional .74 cfs into the water bank, which brought a total of over 17 cfs of Whychus Creek back into fisheries.

(One cubic-foot per second (cfs) equals 7.48 gallons per second, or 646,000 gallons per day. As long as it keeps snowing and raining in the Cascades, Whychus Creek will keep flowing at the rate of from 7 cfs to a whopping 1,900 cfs. It's during those rare times when the creek is thundering along at 1,900 cfs that it tears out bridges and sends waters three feet deep over its flood plain).

A Forest Service team will be looking at what needs to be done to protect the wilder side of upper Whychus while allowing for public use and enjoyment.

"We know we need to work on creating a logical trail system and closing the dozens of informal trails and roads that are developing," Pajutee explained. "Unfortunately, there's 'commando' trail and road building going on by people who insist on driving or biking wherever they want. As Sisters grows, we think people will realize what a treasure we have in this secretive creek in our backyard and more people will want to protect it."

The group, which toured the creek on Tuesday, talked of developing a volunteer group of river stewards to keep an eye on things.

Creek’s usage has changed over decades

Whychus Creek, that beautiful little gurgling stream - once known as Squaw Creek - that runs through Sisters, is a never-ending source of water and recreation for the Sisters Country.

From the glacial springs where it rises in the Three Sisters Wilderness, to where it empties into the Deschutes, 41 miles from its source, life and beauty abounds.

It's all that life and beauty that brought Congress to bestow "Wild and Scenic River" status on the upper 15.6 miles of Whychus Creek in 1988. This special designation is given to only one-quarter of 1 percent of our nation's rivers. It's meant to protect their free-flowing nature and unique qualities for generations to come.

But it wasn't all that life or beauty that excited the early pioneers the first time they saw it, around 1898 - it was water for irrigation. The sandy soil of Central Oregon is a thirsty substrate on which to grow vegetables, grain and hay. Without irrigation water, nothing good happens.

Irrigation from Whychus Creek started around 1869. With homesteading underway in grand scale, by 1900 several irrigation companies were taking water from Whychus Creek, and by 1912 a lawsuit was filed in what was then Crook County "In the Matters of the Determination of the Relative Rights to the Waters of Squaw Creek...." What this amounted to was that so much water was taken from Whychus Creek (along with Pole Creek) that it went dry before arriving at the budding town site of Sisters.

In the 1900s and up to the late 1980s, agriculture was the big water-user in this part of Oregon. Next came the demands for cheap electricity, and between the two, that meant the end of the prodigious runs of ocean-run salmon that once plied the waters of the Whychus, Deschutes and Metolius watersheds.

Fremont, the Pathfinder, who, with Kit Carson, wandered through this part of Oregon looking for a new route to California in the early 1800s, remarked in his journal that it was possible to walk across the rivers and streams on the backs of spawning salmon.

Restoration efforts of many folks, including the City of Sisters, the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council, irrigators and the Forest Service, are combining to bring water and habitat back to the lower reaches of the creek.