Wallowa Lake

The board explains the moraines; the lake's other story is at its outlet. A dam built a century ago to store irrigation water, and raised in 1929, had no fish passage, and it helped end the lake's sockeye, the only run of them in Oregon's share of the Snake River basin. The kokanee that remain are mostly descended from stocked fish. The Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the state and the irrigation district have since agreed to rebuild the dam and bring sockeye back; the tribes and district raised $29.25 million toward it.

What the plaque says

Oregon Geology Wallowa Lake Wallowa Lake fills a depression that was formerly occupied by a great river of ice that flowed out of the high Wallowa Mountains to the south. This glacier reached its greatest size in the late Pleistocene age, about 12 to 40 thousand years ago. As it flowed out onto the valley floor, the glacier built great piles of rock debris around its edges, called moraines. When the ice melted away, the moraines remained as the high straight ridges we see today. The lake is 283 feet deep, but the glacier was over 1500 feet thick. These moraines are some of the best-preserved examples to be found anywhere in North America.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Joseph and the Bronze Foundries — 1.4 mi
  A ranch town under the Wallowas that became a bronze-casting center after local sculptors talked a resident into opening a foundry in 1982, with seven monumental bronzes now on Main Street.
• Wallowa and the Tamkaliks Celebration — 22 mi
  The town in the valley the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce was driven from in 1877, where since 1991 their descendants have come home each summer for a celebration named for where you can see the mountains.

More markers nearby

• Nez Perce — 7.2 mi