Fish Ladder Park is one of the most unusual public art installations in the Midwest, a working fish ladder that is also a sculpture. Fish Ladder Park was created in 1975, designed by sculptor Joseph Kinnebrew as part of an effort to allow Chinook salmon and steelhead trout to bypass the Sixth Street Dam and reach upstream spawning grounds that industrial-era dams had cut off for decades. The ladder consists of a series of stepped concrete pools built into a slope on the west bank, connected by sculpted flanges and channels that Kinnebrew shaped into an abstract, almost geological form.
In September and October, when salmon run, crowds gather on the viewing platform to watch the fish climb through the structure — an astonishing natural spectacle in the middle of an urban river. The dam itself, a few hundred yards downstream, is scheduled for eventual removal, which would restore the river to something closer to the free-flowing channel the Odawa fished for centuries. Until then, the ladder stands as proof that art and ecology can solve the same problem at the same time.