At the McCarran Ranch about 10 miles east of Sparks, Michael Cameron gestures towards the underbrush along the Truckee River to trace the meandering stream the river soon will become.

The flood-control policies of the 1960s straightened the Truckee and turned it into a chute for rushing water. Today, most of the river at McCarran Ranch is shallow, 200 feet wide, devoid of rapids and sunk in a channel walled with sand and soil. A few 80- and 90-year-old cottonwoods — the “granddaddies,” Cameron calls them — cling to the banks where decades ago a forest shaded plants and animals. The once-wild river, he says, is “trapped in a straight jacket.” But not for long.

Within a few years, the Truckee will be set free to meander like a snake through a canopy of cottonwoods, ripple over rapids, and gurgle past pockets of wetlands. That newly liberated stream will spawn a forest. It will slack the thirst of native plants and animals long shoved aside by invasive weeds and humanity’s insults to the water.

The reconstruction will turn back time. The Truckee’s past will become its future.

“It’s no small task to jump-start an ecosystem,” says Cameron, Truckee River projects director for the Nature Conservancy. “What we want to do is establish equilibrium. Nature does that in geologic timeframes; we’re trying to do it in a few years.” He says local, state, and federal officials — particularly Greg Dennis of Reno and Wayne Sidell of Sparks —collaborated on ways to bring back a healthy, natural river system. A meandering river, with forests and wetlands, would filter pollution and soak up floodwaters, experts say, as well as open up new opportunities for wildlife, hikers, fisherman, kayakers, and rafters. A new river trail, in progress both east and west of Reno, would connect with the existing urban river walk and offer strollers and bikers a scenic route through miles of riparian habitat.

Banding together

Thanks to dedicated advocates, committed public officials and money from federal, local, and private sources, the rehabilitation has been under way for four years.

The Nature Conservancy plans to restore 20 miles of the river from Vista to Wadsworth, where the Truckee bends northward to terminate in Pyramid Lake. So far, Conservancy contractors have built a mile of new river, with an additional 3.5 miles of channel restoration planned by 2007. They will plant 60 acres of forest and are working to reintroduce native plants, such as five species of willows, and encourage new populations of fauna, such as the leopard frog.

That’s Phase 1. Eleven other sites have been identified for restoration along the 20-mile stretch, including the Mustang Ranch, 102 Ranch, and Lockwood properties. Of the $10 million project, $6 million comes from federal coffers, $3 million is local money, and $1 million is from private donations.

“Right now it’s a pilot project at McCarran Ranch,” Cameron says. “We’re learning what works and what doesn’t.”

Rough road

Some of the best-laid plans can backfire. For example, small cottonwoods planted alongside the river became treats for deer, beaver, and voles until defensive plans evolved. The trees are wrapped to shield their bark from the smaller animals and a fence keeps deer away from the new-growth areas.

The problems with voles, which are small rodents, also were an unexpected result of watering the seedlings with sprinklers. The sprays meant for native species also nurtured weeds and the vole population exploded. A drip-irrigation system has replaced the sprinklers and hawks and other raptors will reduce the vole invasion, Cameron says.

“It’s not as straightforward as it might seem,” he says. “It’s trial and error.” In the more than 150 years since wagon trains first followed the Truckee River Route through Nevada to California, error has ruled the waterway.

In the 1870s, sawdust from lumber operations clogged the river and the Truckee was an open sewer for decades. Reno residents described the water as noxious “chowder.” In February 1879, the Reno Evening Gazette reported the Truckee River was the color of melted butter because of oil dumped in the water. The newspaper reported the river “is a tumbling mass of sawdust … A poor lonesome fish would not even know its mother two feet away.”

Yet, the river recovered. By the 1960s public opinion and government policy came together to protect the Truckee. But the same technological advances and political intervention that improved water quality also crushed much of the river’s natural habitat.

John Champion, the self-styled protector of the Truckee, told a reporter in 1992 of all the mistakes that harmed the Truckee, it took flood-control programs in the 1960s to nearly bring the river to ruin.

“To protect Reno and Sparks from floods, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers came through and straightened out the river to make it a spout, a fire hose that would spray the water away east of Reno,” Champion remembered.

“Engineers (exploded) the Vista Reefs (rapids), took away the river bends, and left us with a high-walled ditch.” The result: 90 percent of the cottonwood forest east of the Truckee Meadows vanished when seedlings could no longer be nurtured by spring floodwaters. Of the 91 bird species identified along the Truckee River by a naturalist in an 1868 survey, 42 had vanished by 1976. Invasive weeds like tall whitetop choked out native plants, most native trout became extinct, and people feared the river would never recover.

“A natural river has meanders, oxbows, and backwaters,” says Kim Tisdale, fisheries biologist for the Nevada Division of Wildlife. “A river is a complex ecosystem of riffles, runs, and pools.” The diversity of environments makes for a diversity of animals and plants, she says, but once the river became a slow, wide, deep channel, many species vanished.

Never say die

Yet, the river wouldn’t be fully tamed. In 1986, a flood carved sandbars where cottonwoods took root and a long drought allowed them to mature without being swept away. The same thing happened after a major flood in January 1997, says Sherman Swanson, an environmental science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“Now the trees are as big around as my arm,” Swanson says. “They’re able to withstand the flows, catch sediments, and build stream banks.” The birds are returning. At McCarran Ranch, white pelicans, red-tailed hawks, great horned owls, and some bird species that haven’t been seen on the Truckee in decades observe the redevelopment work. This summer, Wood’s rose, buffalo berries, black currants, and Nebraska sedge will boom where noxious weeds held sway.

“It’s amazing how quickly the critters will recolonize,” says Tisdale. “The fish and the bugs come back. Make the habitat and they will find their way to it.” She says the cottonwood forest is key to a thriving fishery.

“It’s really nice what’s happening at McCarran Ranch,” she says. “It’s good not just for the fish and animals, but for the health of the river in general. The riparian forest will provide more bugs for the fish, but the cottonwood trees will also stabilize the banks and reduce the amount of sediment going into the river.” Susan Lynn, a founder of the Truckee River Yacht Club in 1988, says the group lobbied for a better-protected, more natural river. That vision now is given life from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake.

“I’m thrilled with what’s happening on the river,” Lynn says. “For years, we were pretty much the only ones out there advocating, but today so many people and groups are involved … The Nature Conservancy is leading the way.” Cameron says if the Truckee were left alone, it would eventually return to its natural state.

“In 200 years or so, the river would probably heal itself,” he says. “We’re just trying to give it a jump-start, a little help getting out of that straight jacket.” The Conservancy also is negotiating with Sierra Pacific to purchase seven miles of the river from the Nevada state line to Floriston, including 3,200 acres in California. The Corps of Engineers, once labeled by environmentalists as the enemy of a natural river, now provides millions to undo the flood-control measures considered state-of-the art in the 1960s.

What was straightened will become serpentine. What was stagnant will bring forth new life. For 150 years, we’ve walled in the river, bombed its reefs into pebbles, dammed its channels, chopped out its islands, and penned it up until its spirit seemed broken. But the Truckee endured. Wiser now, we set it free.

“We want to reintroduce the dynamic process,” Cameron says. “We are putting it in place with the full expectation that it will move. We want the river to do what it does naturally. The river has its own ideas.”

Frank Mullen is investigative reporter at the Reno Gazette-Journal and author of The Donner Party Chronicles: A Day-by-Day Account of a Doomed Wagon Train, 1846-47. His interest in the Truckee River Trail led him to write River of Hope: The Truckee River Chronicles, a history of the river from prehistoric times to the present. The river book is nearly complete and should be in print sometime next year.