Qualla: Klamath River

Klamath River: Introduction

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Wade, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Yurok people call it "the Bloodline: the life blood of the people." For at least 7,000 years, the Klamath River sustained tribes who built their cosmologies around its salmon runs - the third largest on the Pacific coast. Then came the dams. For over a century, concrete walls blocked the river's pulse, cutting off hundreds of miles of spawning habitat. In October 2024, the last of four dams fell in the largest dam removal project in American history. Within months, Chinook salmon were spotted at the confluence of the Sprague and Williamson Rivers, above Upper Klamath Lake - waters they hadn't reached in over 100 years. The Klamath's story is one of devastation and renewal, of competing claims to water, and of what happens when a river is finally allowed to remember what it once was.

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Image: Daniel Wade | CC BY-SA 3.0

Klamath River: A River Between Worlds

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives, CC BY 4.0. The Klamath begins its 263-mile journey at Lake Ewauna near Klamath Falls, Oregon, where the high desert meets the Cascade Range. From there it cuts westward through volcanic rock, traversing the Klamath Mountains before emerging into the temperate rainforest of California's Nort...

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Image: Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives | CC BY 4.0

Klamath River: The People of the River

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pacific Southwest Region 5, Public domain. Multiple tribes shaped their lives around the Klamath's rhythms. The Yurok, Hupa, and Karuk along the lower canyons caught salmon with weirs, basket traps, and harpoons. Ishi Pishi Falls near the Salmon River confluence has been a traditional Karuk fishing ground for millennia. T...

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Image: Pacific Southwest Region 5 | Public domain

Klamath River: A Century of Concrete

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington from Portland, America, Public domain. The damming of the Klamath began in 1918 when Copco No. 1 rose in Ward's Canyon, blocking fish migration to more than 350 miles of spawning streams in the Upper Basin. Copco No. 2 followed in 1925, J.C. Boyle Dam in 1958, and Iron Gate Dam shortly after. Meanwhile, the federal go...

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Image: Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington from Portland, America | Public domain

Klamath River: The Waters Break Free

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oregon State University, CC BY-SA 2.0. The path to dam removal took nearly two decades of negotiations between tribes, conservation groups, local representatives, and PacifiCorp, the utility operating the dams. In 2016, the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement outlined procedures for removal while maintaining ir...

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Image: Oregon State University | CC BY-SA 2.0

Klamath River: A River Remembering

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives, CC BY 4.0. In the summer of 2025, a group of teenage tribal members completed a 30-day canoe descent of the full river - the first such journey in over 100 years. Supported by the NGO Rios to Rivers, they trained for two years before launching from the headwaters. Indigenous representatives...

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Image: Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives | CC BY 4.0