The Dosewallips River ( ) is a

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of w ...

situated on the

Olympic Peninsula The Olympic Peninsula is a large arm of land in western Washington that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle, and contains Olympic National Park. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and th ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

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 ...

. It rises near Mount Anderson in the

Olympic Mountains The Olympic Mountains are a mountain range on the Olympic Peninsula of the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are not especially high – Mount Olympus is the highest at ; however, the easte ...

within

Olympic National Park Olympic National Park is a United States national park located in the State of Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula. The park has four regions: the Pacific coastline, alpine areas, the west-side temperate rainforest, and the forests of the drier ...

and drains to

Hood Canal Hood Canal is a fjord forming the western lobe, and one of the four main basins,Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

. The river originates in two forks, which join about five miles from the headwaters. The

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propert ...

maintains trails and campsites along both forks, including one at the fork itself. The road leading to the trailhead was washed out in January 2002, and the ranger station near the trailhead has been abandoned. The entire

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environm ...

of the Dosewallips is within Dosewallips State Park and ongoing restoration efforts led by Wild Fish Conservancy, the

Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe The Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, formerly known as the Port Gamble Indian Community of the Port Gamble Reservation or the Port Gamble Band of S'Klallam Indians is a federally recognized tribe of S'Klallam people, located on the Kitsap Peninsula i ...

, and the Hood Canal Coordinating Council are intended to improve

salmon Salmon () is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family Salmonidae, which are native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (genus ''Salmo'') and North Pacific (genus '' Oncorhy ...

habitat through the reconnection of the river to its historical

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...

Name

The name Dosewallips comes from a

Twana Twana is the collective name for a group of nine Coast Salish peoples in the northern-mid Puget Sound region, most of whom are extinct or are now subsumed into other groups and organized tribes. The Skokomish are the main surviving group and se ...

Indian myth about a man named Dos-wail-opsh who was turned into a mountain at the river's source. There are also several

Klallam Klallam (also Clallam, although the spelling with "K" is preferred in all four modern Klallam communities) refers to four related indigenous Native American/First Nations communities from the Pacific Northwest of North America. The Klallam cult ...

legends about the "Great Changer", Doquebatl, who transformed a mythical Klallam chief into a mountain at the headwaters of the Dosewallips River. In another story Doquebatl changed a woman into Mount Rainier and her son into Little Tahoma.

History

In 1923, the

Washington State Department of Highways The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT or WashDOT, both ) is a governmental agency that constructs, maintains, and regulates the use of transportation infrastructure in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. Establi ...

built a steel

truss bridge A truss bridge is a bridge whose load-bearing superstructure is composed of a truss, a structure of connected elements, usually forming triangular units. The connected elements (typically straight) may be stressed from tension, compression, or ...

over the river near its mouth in Brinnon to carry U.S. Route 101. In 1982, the Jefferson County Public Utility District proposed the construction of a 10.4-megawatt

hydroelectric dam Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined an ...

on the river near the Elkhorn Campground. Controversy over the dam project led to a dispute between the PUD and the Washington Department of Ecology that was settled in the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

case '' PUD No. 1 of Jefferson County v. Washington Department of Ecology'' in 1994.

References

External links

National Park Service - Olympic National Park
{{authority control Rivers of Washington (state) Rivers of Jefferson County, Washington

Name

History

See also

References

External links