I’m standing on rocks in a pool at the base of a waterfall watching my kids scramble around the cascading water. It’s one of those strikingly beautiful moments where the world feels wild and anything seems possible. I’m on a side hike during a multi-day river trip on the Klamath River, a designated Wild and Scenic River that flows through southern Oregon and northern California. This river in particular has had a big year. Named the 2024 River of the Year by American Rivers, the Klamath recently underwent one of the biggest dam removal and river restoration projects in American history. Like I said, it’s the kind of place where the world feels wild and anything is possible.
The Klamath, once the third-largest salmon producing river on the West Coast, has suffered major decreases in salmon populations since four hydroelectric dams were built on the river between 1911 and 1962. In 2002, the Klamath made headlines when roughly 70 thousand salmon were killed by toxic cyanobacteria growing in the reservoirs created by the dams. Since then, local indigenous tribes and environmental and fishing groups have fought hard for the removal of the dams, campaigning for years to get state governments to call for the removal of the dams. Last fall, their plight ended with the successful removal of four dams on the Klamath River.
Before we put on the Klamath for a three-day float, we visited the Karuk Tribe’s People’s Center Museum in the town of Happy Camp. There, Kenneth Brink, vice chairman of the Karuk Tribal Council, told us: “When the dams came down, they said it could be 10 years before the salmon returned. But the salmon were back swimming in the river just 10 days later.”