Congdon Canal, Fish Screen, Naches River, Yakima, Yakima County, WA

Significance: The apparatus is the earliest known, and continuously operated, rotary-drum fish screen in the south-central Washington region. In 1926, active enforcement of a 1905 Washington State Fisheries Code law produced a deluge of inventions and experiments with fish screen/stop devices that lasted well into the 1930s. Around 1927, Charles Cobb, of the Yakima Valley Canal Company, fabricated and installed an ingeniously simple, self-cleaning, self-propelled, prototype rotary-drum fish screen. The screen proved to be so successful that it is still in use. It may have significantly influenced generations of rotary-drum fish screen designs that are commonly used today. The Congdon Canal Fish Screen was determined eligible for the National Register of Historic Places in January 1991.
Survey number: HAER WA-114-A