UPPER NEHALEM WATERSHED

Upper Nehalem Watershed
Upper Nehalem

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Landscape

The Upper Nehalem Watershed rises in the northeast corner of Tillamook County, in the Tillamook National Forest. The Nehalem River initially flows northeast, across the northwest corner of Washington County and into western Columbia County, past Vernonia (population 2,420) and Pittsburg. At Pittsburg, it looks to the northwest and west into Clatsop County and then flows southwest back into northern Tillamook County. The upper watershed is approximately 500 square miles. In its upper reaches, the Nehalem River flows through long narrow valleys of small mountain communities.

History of the Indigenous Culture

The Nehalem River is named for the people who lived along the coast prior to European settlement. However, the upper river was populated by a group known as the Clatskanie. The Clatskanies split off from a band of Athapasan speakers, the Kwalhioquas, who lived in the hills north of the lower Columbia River. These people migrated south in search of better subsistence and later formed the Clatskanie tribe. The original Kwalhioquas from Washington eventually disappeared, while the Clatskanie tribe grew, at least for a little while.

The Clatskanies had a reputation for demanding tribute from those who passed through their territory and are rumored to be the tribe which attacked the fort of Lewis and Clark in 1805-1806.

By 1910, there were only three remaining members of the Clatskanie tribe, victims of the forces of smallpox, fighting, and intermingling with other tribes.

Settlement

Logging

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

Pioneers generally followed narrow Indian trails from the Willamette and Columbia River basins toward the Nehalem Valley. Gravel was eventually removed from the bed of the Nehalem River to construct roads along these routes.

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 structure downstream. The riparian vegetation along stream banks was also damaged as logs were dragged into the river. The last old growth timber in the watershed was cut in 1945.

The Tillamook Burn

1951 Fire: Tillamook Forest History

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.

[Reforestation] can never compensate for that tragedy we call the Tillamook Burn, as somber a sight as to be viewed this side of the Styx. There they stand, millions of ghostly firs, now stark against the sky, which were green as the sea and twice as handsome, until an August day of 1933, when a tiny spark blew into a hurricane of fire that removed all life from 300,000 acres (1,200 km) of the finest timber even seen. It was timber, too, that had been 400 years in the making. It was wiped out in a few seething hours which Oregon will have reason to remember well past the year 2000.
- Stewart Holbrook

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 school children and volunteers—across the blackened landscape.

Today

The upper watershed includes an important timber-producing region of Oregon that was the site of the Tillamook Burn. The higher elevation areas of the watershed are dominated by conifers 25-75 cm in diameter. Today, the lower elevation areas, especially bordering the mainstream Nehalem River, are dominated by stands which are more than 70% broadleaf species or are mixed broadleaf and conifers.

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

Clatskanie. University of Oregon.

Joseph Maser. Nehalem River Watershed Assessment. Master's Thesis: University of Portland.

Compiled by John Ame, Science Writer (2007)