Editing Fish ladder (section)

==History==
[[File:Denil fish ladder.jpg|thumb|right|Denil Fishway on Salmon Creek, [[Montana]]]]

Written reports of rough fishways date to 17th-century France, where bundles of branches were used to make steps in steep channels to bypass obstructions. 

A 1714 construction of an old channel bypassing a dam, "originally cut for the passage of fish up and down the river", is mentioned in the 1823 U.S. Circuit Court Case Tyler v. Wilkinson. This example predates the 1880 fish ladder at Pawtuxet Falls. The 1714 channel "wholly failed for this purpose" and, in 1730, a mill was built in its place. The channel and its mill usage became an important legal case in U.S. water law.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Mason |first1=William P. |title=Tyler v. Wilkinson |url=https://opencasebook.org/casebooks/510-open-source-property/resources/3.3.2.2-tyler-v-wilkinson/ |website=Open Casebook |publisher=Harvard Law School Library |access-date=30 August 2023}}</ref>

A pool and [[weir]] salmon ladder was built around 1830 by James Smith, a Scottish engineer on the River Teith, near Deanston, Perthshire in Scotland. Both the weir and salmon ladder are there today and many subsequent salmon ladders built in Scotland were inspired by it.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/James_Smith_(1789-1850)|title = James Smith (1789-1850) - Graces Guide}}</ref> 

A version was patented in 1837 by Richard McFarlan of [[Bathurst, New Brunswick]], Canada, who designed a fishway to bypass a dam at his water-powered lumber mill.<ref>Mario Theriault, ''Great Maritime Inventions 1833–1950'', Goose Lane, 2001, p. 45</ref> In 1852–1854, the Ballisodare Fish Pass was built in [[County Sligo]] in Ireland to draw [[salmon]] into a river that had not supported a fishery. In 1880, the first fish ladder was built in [[Rhode Island]], United States, on the [[Pawtuxet Village|Pawtuxet Falls]] Dam. The ladder was removed in 1924, when the [[Providence, Rhode Island|City of Providence]] replaced the wood dam with a [[concrete]] one. USA legislated fishways in 1888.<ref>{{cite web |title=33 U.S. Code § 608 - Construction of fishways |url=https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/33/608 |website=LII / Legal Information Institute |language=en}}</ref>

As the [[Industrial Revolution|Industrial Age]] advanced, dams and other river obstructions became larger and more common, leading to the need for effective fish by-passes.<ref>Office Of Technology Assessment Washington DC (1995) [https://books.google.com/books?id=ctBsJJ0oKHEC&dq=%22Fish+passage+technologies%22&pg=PA9 ''Fish passage technologies : protection at hydropower facilities''] Diana Publishing, {{ISBN|1-4289-2016-1}}.</ref>