Forms part of the Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series.
Collection is open for research.
Mark L. Ufkes was born in 1955 and grew up in the Tri-Cities, in Washington state, where his father, Leon Ufkes, worked at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Mark Ufke earned three degrees from Washington State University in Pullman: a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1977, a bachelor's degree in agricultural economics in 1985, and a master's degree in adult education in 1987. He later also earned a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University in 1994. In 1991, he and Lois A. Schipper were married. In the late 1990s, he started Hanford Reach Columbia River Tours, a business operating jet boat tours on the Columbia River in the Tri-Cities area. In 2005, he began working with Indian River Development Services, an organization providing consulting services to tribal governments. In the mid-2010s, he served as executive director for the Quileute Tribe in La Push, Washington.
Sources: Vital records in Ancestry.com; information provided by Ufkes in his interview; "Jet Boat Skippers Starting to Offer Reach Tours," by John Stang, Tri-City Herald, June 13, 1996, Page C1; "Tri-City Riverboat Competition Heating Up," by Mike Lee, Tri-City Herald, May 24, 1998, Page A8; "Candy Mountain seller grateful for new park," by Wendy Culverwell, May 3, 2016, Tri-City Herald; "Remembering Leon B. Ufkes, 1926-2023," West Seattle Blog, December 15, 2023 (accessed February 2026),
In 1990, the Washington State Historical Society, Portland State University, and Washington State University Vancouver formed the Center for Columbia River History (CCRH) to promote research, education, and public programs about the Columbia River Basin. The center operated for more than 20 years. Among its work was the Columbia River Basin Project (CRBP), an umbrella project supported by a 1997 grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The CRBP included online exhibits, oral histories, and high school curricula about the history of the region's land, wildlife, and people.
As part of the project, CCRH partnered with the Oregon Historical Society Research Library’s oral history program, headed by Jim Strassmaier, to gather interviews. Oral Historian Michael O’Rourke spearheaded the Northwest Power Planning Council Oral History Series, while Oral Historian Clark Hansen oversaw the Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series, with aid from two Portland State University research assistants, Dannette Rowe and Tania Hyatt. In addition, CCRH conducted oral history interviews for a third project, Columbia Communities, and later donated the interview recordings and transcripts to the OHS Research Library,
The Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series culminated in 59 interviews (approximately 184 recorded hours) conducted between 1998 and 2001. Interviewees included Native people, activists, farmers, conservationists, fishers, and others who contributed to the shaping of policies that have had, and continue to have, significant impacts on the Columbia River Basin in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia. The interviewees opposed policies by agencies such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bonneville Power Administration, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and advocated for alternative visions of management and use of the Columbia River.
Sources: “Voices of the Columbia,” by Bryan White, PSU Magazine, Fall 1998, Page 17; Center for Columbia River History brochure, undated (circa 2000); Center for Columbia River History website (accessed July 10, 2025, partially archived at
Forms part of the Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series.
Oral history interview with Mark L. Ufkes, by Clark Hansen, SR 2732, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
This interview was previously cataloged as part of SR 2700.1, the Center for Columbia River History Oral Histories. SR 2700.1 included oral histories gathered for two separate projects: those conducted by the Oregon Historical Society Research Library for the Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series, and those collected by the Center for Columbia River History for its Columbia Communities Project. In 2024-2025, as part of digitization of the Dissenters interviews, the collection was reprocessed to separate the two sets of interviews for improved access. Each of the 59 Columbia River Dissenters interviews was cataloged individually under the name of the interviewee. The interviews for the Communities project were kept together as a single collection that was redesignated as
Audio recording and transcript of an oral history interview with Mark L. Ufkes that was conducted by Clark Hansen on January 26, 2000, in King County, Washington, as part of the Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series.
In this interview, Ufkes discusses his family background and early life in the Tri-Cities, Washington, and talks about living near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where his father, Leon Ufkes, worked. He shares his memories of nuclear attack drills and other examples of nuclear anxiety in American culture during his early life. He talks about the patriotism that people felt living near the nuclear reactors in the mid-20th century, and discusses how public opinion on nuclear power changed. He describes how he became aware of salmon population decline in the Columbia River. He talks about the effect of dams on salmon, about his business piloting riverboat tours on the Columbia River in the Hanford Reach, and about his opposition to construction of a new dam in Hells Canyon. He speaks extensively about proposals for the development of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. He closes the interviews by discussing ideas on how to get small land owners involved in wildlife and fishery conservation.
Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA,