January 2023 will see West Linn's Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation, with heritage partners and friends, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Locks' opening with a month-long display of Locks images in the Community Room. A public tribute to the 150 years the canal has served river traffic on the Willamette will take place on Saturday, January 21, at 2pm. 

The new Willamette Falls Navigation Canal and Locks opened on New Years Day, 1873, a long-awaited event that prompted what was probably the biggest public celebration since statehood, just 14 years before.  Politicians and pundits, oligarchs and ordinary Oregonians alike applauded the navigational improvement that would greatly simplify river passage around the great falls of the Willamette at Oregon City. For more details, please contact LWVCC member Sandy at sandy.carter [at] wordscount.biz