For a century, Americans threw concrete across the great salmon rivers of the West — the Columbia, the Snake, the Elwha, the Klamath — certain that taming a wild river was part of the nation's destiny. The dams delivered cheap power, irrigated deserts, and tamed floods. They also blocked the salmon, drowned Native fishing grounds ten thousand years old, and broke treaties the United States had promised to keep forever. Rivers Reborn is a 12-part ReThink History series on how that happened — and how it was undone. Who profited financially, who profited politically, why the dead salmon rivers of the Atlantic a century earlier never taught the West the lesson, and how Native nations tore the dams back down in the largest removal in history. The salmon came back within weeks. A personal story runs through it: as a boy, the host camped on a Klamath tributary so thick with spawning salmon you could barely find open water to fill a cup — beside a farm already abandoned because the valley was about to be flooded. Decades later he paddled a reservoir directly over that drowned campsite. Today the dam is gone, the reservoir is gone, and the fall salmon are back. Twelve episodes. One question: what is a river for? ▶ Full series: [your NEW playlist URL] 🔔 Subscribe: youtube.com/@LetsRethinkHistory?sub_confirmation=1 #History #RiversReborn #ReThinkHistory