"Red Shirt took me back to Celilo the day they closed the floodgates on the dam. For a few hours, it didn't seem to make much difference. The whitewater came rushing down the chutes, roaring and crashing over the falls. But down below you could see it hit the dam and start rolling back against itself, like wild horses driven into a blind canyon cutting back on their trail. By the middle of the afternoon, you could tell the water was rising. A large pool of it stretched all across the river and started eddying back toward the falls. But the falls kept on roaring as if nothing could stop them...

...Finally, the lake reached the base of the first falls, so the engineers in their hardhats and ties, the politicians, lined up for pictures - the last pictures of the falls...

...The lake rose against the falls. The water kept pouring over the falls, but the more it crashed into the lake, the higher the lake rose, choking it back. I closed my eyes, praying it would stop. Then I opened them and stared. One after another, the falls drowned themselves, until the roaring stopped and I couldn't hear anything but the sucking of the dark, eddying lake as it grew larger and larger, filling the canyon."

-from Winterkill, by Craig Lesley, on The Dalles Dam.