LOWER NEHALEM WATERSHED

Indigenous Culture

The Nehalem River is named for the people who lived in the watershed prior to European settlement. They lived in small villages clustered along the coastal rivers. The Nehalems visited and intermarried with the Clatsop Indians to the north and the Tillamook Indians to the south.

Nehalem Valley (Neahkahnie Net)

Salmon and seafood were the major natural resources used by Indians in the area. In addition, the Coast Range provided game and berries. In order to keep grass growing on mountainsides for deer and elk, Indians regularly burned trees and brush every few years. The predictable timing of salmon migrations for spawning provided Indians with a dependable means of catching fish and rich symbolism regarding the renewal of life. The Indians only took enough fish for their own use or for trading dried fish with other tribes.

Jennie Michel, descendant of the Clatsop Tribe, ca. 1900
(Clatsop County Historical Society)

Clatsop-Nehalem people met Lewis and Clark in the winter of 1805-06 and offered them salmon, berries and other aid. Diseases brought by white settlers over the next 40 years significantly reduced native populations, up to 90 percent by some estimates.

In an 1851 treaty, the Clatsop-Nehalem tribes ceded 90 percent of their land to the U.S. government, but the treaty was never ratified by Congress. The Clatsop and Nehalem people began to "slip through the cracks" of the treaty process. Some Clatsops and Nehalems joined relatives at the Siletz, Grand Ronde, or Quinault Reservations, but with no treaty and no reservation, many Clatsop and Nehalem families remained in their traditional homeland and never became part of a federally recognized tribe.

Today, the remaining 200 members of the Clatsop-Nehalem tribe have an average age of 65 and are scattered across Oregon and southwestern Washington.

Settlement

Logging (The History of The Catholic
People on the Upper Cowlitz River)

Hans Anderson was the first pioneer to settle in the Nehalem Valley in 1866. He resided near Elsie close to River Mile 40. His main means of travel was canoe. Many more pioneers settled the upper and lower watershed during the following decade. Trees were so abundant that in order to build a cabin or clear land for farming, the pioneers had to cut any trees in their way as they moved westward. This process was called "cut, burn, and move on syndrome." Thousands of trees were cut and either burned or left to decay. Pioneers generally followed narrow Indian trails from the Willamette and Columbia River basins to the Nehalem Valley. Gravel was eventually removed from the bed of the Nehalem River to construct roads along these routes.

Nehalem Settlement
(Nehalem Telecommunications, Inc.)

Logging began early and gained momentum as the area became more populated. Early settlers took advantage of the relatively smooth flowing river as a highway in which to transport lumber. Log drives down the Nehalem River started in 1901 and lasted until 1926. Logs were floated down rivers on high winter flows. This practice scoured the river bottom and swept large woody debris downstream. The riparian vegetation along stream banks was also damaged as logs were dragged into the river. A splash dam existed on the North Fork Nehalem. The river was dammed so that water and logs were backed up behind the dam. Then the dam was released along with the cascading water and logs to go to the sawmill downstream. The dike wall at Wheeler was constructed in the early 1920s to direct the water and logs to the Wheeler sawmill. It is estimated that a hundred million board feet of timber were floated out of the North Fork of the Nehalem River, mostly with the assistance of splash dams. The last old growth timber in the watershed was cut in 1945.

Commercial fishing also contributed substantially to the economy. Nearly everyone that lived in the valley got into the fishing business at least part-time. They worked whenever the fish were running and moved in and out of the area depending on quantities of fish available. Gill nets were used extensively to catch mature fish swimming upstream. Gill nets allow the smaller, immature fish to get through the net. In order to prevent spoilage of the commercial harvests, fish canneries were built in Wheeler and canned fish was shipped mainly by rail. During the off-season, fisherman would clear large woody debris from the river which hung up and tore their nets.

The Tillamook Burn

1951 Fire (Tillamook Forest History)

The Tillamook Burn was the collective name for a series of wildfires that struck the northern Oregon Coast Range mountains, including parts of the Nehalem watershed, in the 1930s and 1940s. The fires blackened more than 550 square miles and brought profound environmental, economic and social change to Northwest Oregon.

Today's Tillamook State Forest is the product of a monumental reforestation effort undertaken in the 1950s and 1960s. More than 72 million seedlings were planted by hand -- many of them by schoolchildren and volunteers -- across the blackened landscape.

Today

Uplands in the Lower Nehalem Watershed are primarily 2nd or 3rd growth conifers 25-75 cm in diameter. A mixture of broadleaf and conifers exist at the lower elevations and along the mainstream of the river. The Nehalem River and tributaries provide habitat for spring and fall chinook, coho salmon, chum salmon, steelhead trout, and sea-run cutthroat trout.

To learn more about the Nehalem 4th field watershed, visit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Surf Your Watershed website.

Sources

Compiled by John Ame, Science Writer (2007)