Irrigon Hatchery

Raceways above John Day Dam

From Highway 730 a hatchery sign marks the turn onto W. 8th Street, which runs north to the Columbia River and ends at the Irrigon Hatchery, three miles west of town and upstream of John Day Dam. The town was called Stokes until about 1905, when the first four letters of irrigation were joined to the last three of Oregon. The hatchery sits on 33 acres owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 277 feet above sea level. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife runs it, and it is co-managed with the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan, which the federal service administers.

A visitor finds a visitor center, a show pond stocked with rainbow trout, restrooms, a camp host, and ADA access. ODFW lists the wildlife as fish and wading birds. The grounds are open from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day, and the department names July through April as the best months to come. In 2015 manager Marc Garst said the hatchery saw between 3,000 and 4,000 visitors a year.

The working part of the station is a grid of 32 concrete raceways, each 100 feet long and 20 feet wide with water 3.75 feet deep, alongside six fiberglass circular tanks. All were built in 1986. Five wells supply about 14,000 gallons a minute year-round. Water passes through an upper series of raceways and is used again in a lower series before it is discharged. June is the low month, when only 9,600 gallons a minute are needed. Nine full-time staff run the place.

Eggs from upriver

No adult fish are caught or spawned at Irrigon. Everything arrives as eggs or young fish from other stations. Steelhead are spawned at Wallowa Hatchery near Enterprise and at the Little Sheep Creek acclimation facility, held at Wallowa until the eggs are eyed, and then sent down to Irrigon. Here they finish incubating in 496 fiberglass trays, stacked twelve and sixteen high. Fall Chinook come as eyed eggs from Lyons Ferry Hatchery in Washington. Coho eggs come from Three Mile Falls Dam on the Umatilla River, where the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation hold and spawn the adults in October and November. Those eggs stay at Irrigon only until they eye up and are sent to Cascade Hatchery in December. Rainbow trout come from Oak Springs Hatchery as fry and sub-legal fish and are raised to half a pound.

The 2024 program plan lays out the year by departures. In mid-November, 400,000 Wallowa-stock steelhead leave for the acclimation ponds at Wallowa Hatchery to spend the winter. In March, 215,000 Imnaha steelhead, grown to five fish to the pound, go to Little Sheep Creek. In mid-March, 240,000 Wallowa steelhead go to the Big Canyon ponds, and in early April another 160,000 go to Wallowa. In late May, 200,000 fall Chinook are released into the lower Grande Ronde River and a million into the Salmon River in Idaho. Rainbow trout go out to northeast Oregon lakes, reservoirs, and streams from March to July. Every steelhead has its adipose fin clipped before release, and a share carry coded-wire tags.

The published figures do not all agree. The ODFW visitors’ guide gives 1.4 million fall Chinook and 575,000 coho eggs. The 2024 plan gives 1.2 million Chinook and 620,000 coho eggs. The City of Irrigon describes the station as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service facility that rears up to 1.7 million steelhead a year.

Four dams in Washington

Every program at Irrigon is classed as harvest mitigation. Each one answers for fishing lost to the four federal dams on the lower Snake River in Washington State. ODFW’s visitors’ guide and its 2024 plan both say the hatchery began operation in 1984 under the Lower Snake River Compensation Program. A 2011 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service review gives 1985 as the year the hatchery was completed and calls it Oregon’s primary steelhead rearing facility under the program. A 1988 assessment of private salmon ranching, prepared for the Oregon Coastal Zone Management Association, also records completion of the “$8.8 million ODFW Irrigon Hatchery” in 1985.

In September 1991 the East Oregonian reported that an experimental hatchery built to restore runs on the Umatilla River was nearly finished next to “the 5-year-old Irrigon Fish Hatchery.” Assistant manager Jack Hurst said 210,000 summer steelhead smolts started at Irrigon that spring would move to the new complex sometime after mid-October. “Combined, the two facilities probably will make the largest hatchery in Oregon,” Hurst said.

The station has also held fish for its neighbors. The 2011 review noted that up to 100,000 young spring Chinook from Lookingglass Hatchery were being reared at Irrigon and then sent back. The review found that this added fish-health risk at both places and recommended trimming programs at Lookingglass so the transfer would no longer be needed.

Tubes in the Grande Ronde

In October 2003, 35 volunteer anglers spent two weeks on the lower Grande Ronde River catching hatchery steelhead for an ODFW pilot project. The aim was to breed fish that would return in the fall, when most wild steelhead had historically arrived. When an angler landed a hatchery fish, he placed it in a tube, laid the tube in shallow moving water with the fish’s nose upstream, and set a flag on the road to mark the spot. Each day ODFW staff gathered the tubes, tagged the fish, and drove them to Wallowa Hatchery to mature.

The anglers caught 82 fish the first week and 23 the second. “Fishing the first week, Oct. 13 through 17, was more successful than the following week, due to changes in water levels and temperatures,” said ODFW fisheries biologist Bill Knox. “However, we were very pleased to reach the 100-fish goal in just two weeks.” Brad Smith, the Enterprise District fish biologist, said, “Without the help of the volunteers, it would have been impossible to collect the number of fish we needed.” The plan was to raise the offspring as a separate group at Irrigon, mark them uniquely, release them in spring 2005, and watch for the first adults in the Grande Ronde in fall 2006.

Valves, repairs, and a raccoon

By 2015 Garst said the hatchery was 30 years old and needed work. The Irrigon-Umatilla complex closed to the public from May 26 through July 15 for repairs, and he said production would not be affected. On April 15, 2024, ODFW closed Irrigon and Umatilla hatcheries again. At Irrigon, staff and contractors had begun replacing the large pond valves, a job that brought heavy equipment onto the grounds and created hazards for visitors. The Lower Snake River Compensation Plan paid for the work, and the department said the gates might reopen near the end of June.

At 12:26 a.m. on a night logged by the East Oregonian at the end of May 2017, several Morrow County agencies answered a call about a fire on the south side of the road under a power pole at 74135 Riverview Lane. The responders found a raccoon tangled in the wires. It had also knocked out power to the pump house.