Hells Canyon

From the summit of He Devil in Idaho's Seven Devils Mountains down to the Snake River, Hells Canyon drops 7,993 feet (2,436 m), making it the deepest river gorge in North America and deeper than the Grand Canyon. The canyon is about 10 miles (16 km) wide and runs along the border of Oregon and Idaho, with a small section reaching into Washington. Its walls are built of ancient volcanic and island-arc rock, sliced open as the Snake cut down through the uplifted plateau, leaving a staircase of basalt benches, bunchgrass slopes and side canyons that are still accessible mostly by jet boat, raft or long trail.

The Nez Perce are the earliest known residents of the canyon, and Shoshone-Bannock, Northern Paiute and Cayuse people also used it. Idaho Power built three dams upstream under a 1955 license, Brownlee (1960), Oxbow and Hells Canyon Dam (1967), which turned the upper gorge into reservoirs. Congress created the 652,000-acre (2,640 km²) Hells Canyon National Recreation Area in 1975, about a third of it designated wilderness, and the free-flowing reach below Hells Canyon Dam remains one of the West's great whitewater runs.

• The Snake River
  The Columbia's largest tributary, carver of Hells Canyon carved by
• Idaho
  The Gem State, a rugged northern Rockies landscape located in
• Oregon
  The Beaver State, from rainforest coast to high desert located in
• Washington
  The Evergreen State, the wet and dry sides of the Cascades located in
• Shoshone Falls
  The Niagara of the West, on the Snake River in Idaho related
• The Grand Canyon
  A mile-deep gorge carved by the Colorado River related