Tuesday February 3, 2026
The Revelator —
For centuries the Elwha River on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula supported some of the West Coast’s most impressive salmon runs. The river’s cold waters, fed by alpine glaciers on the surrounding mountains, flowed 45 miles from the heart of what is now Olympic National Park to the Salish Sea.
Ten distinct runs of salmon and oceangoing trout, including all five North American Pacific salmon species, spawned in the Elwha watershed — until a pair of dams built in the early twentieth century blocked salmon from 90% of the river.