Hells Canyon: The Gorge Deeper Than the Grand Canyon

The Snake River enters the canyon system on the Idaho-Oregon border and descends through a gorge that is seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-three feet deep from the western rim to the water below. That number is not a typo. Hells Canyon is nearly two thousand feet deeper than the Grand Canyon at its comparable deepest measurement, making it the deepest river gorge in North America, and almost nobody in America knows it exists.

The canyon was cut over approximately two million years as the Snake River progressively downcut through ancient basalt lava flows while the Seven Devils Mountains on the Idaho side rose around it. The geology is the inverse of what most people expect: the river did not find a low place and follow it. The river was there, and the mountains grew up around it, and the river simply kept cutting downward as fast as the mountains rose.

No road reaches the bottom of Hells Canyon for most of its length. There is no visitor center at the rim equivalent to the Grand Canyon's South Rim. Access is primarily by jet boat from Lewiston or by raft from upstream put-ins, and much of the canyon floor can only be reached on foot or by water.

The Wallowa Band of the Niimíipuu, the Nez Perce people, lived and fished in Hells Canyon for centuries. The canyon and the adjacent Wallowa Valley formed the core of their homeland. When the federal government demanded their removal in the spring of eighteen seventy-seven, the confrontation that followed began within sight of the canyon rim. The Flight of the Nez Perce, one thousand one hundred and seventy miles and some eighteen engagements, began here, with the Wallowa Band crossing the Snake River and leaving behind the canyon they had called home for generations.