Dosewallips State Park is a public recreation area located where the Dosewallips River empties into
Hood Canal
Hood Canal is a fjord forming the western lobe, and one of the four main basins,Jefferson County,
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
. The
state park
State parks are parks or other protected areas managed at the sub-national level within those nations which use "state" as a political subdivision. State parks are typically established by a state to preserve a location on account of its natural ...
's include both freshwater and saltwater shorelines. The park offers opportunities for picnicking, camping, hiking, boating, fishing, swimming, scuba diving, and shellfish harvesting.
History
The park was acquired in four separate purchases between 1954 and 1972. The park's flats were the site of several old homesteads in an area known as Dose Meadows. The railroad beds found in the park's far southeast side are leftover from the days when timber was hauled by rail from the mountains to be deposited in the water and floated off to ships and mills.
Nature
Four species of wild
salmon
Salmon () is the common name for several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family (biology), family Salmonidae, which are native to tributary, tributaries of the ...
and
steelhead
Steelhead, or occasionally steelhead trout, is the common name of the anadromous form of the coastal rainbow trout or redband trout (O. m. gairdneri). Steelhead are native to cold-water tributaries of the Pacific basin in Northeast Asia and ...
use the Dosewallips River for spawning, and the park provides wintering grounds for a herd of
elk
The elk (''Cervus canadensis''), also known as the wapiti, is one of the largest species within the deer family, Cervidae, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America and Central and East Asia. The common ...
geoducks
The Pacific geoduck ("gooey-duck"; ; ''Panopea generosa'') is a species of very large saltwater clam in the family Hiatellidae. The common name is derived from the Lushootseed ( Nisqually) word .
The geoduck is native to the coastal waters of t ...