Reclaiming the Elwha: Salmon to swim past former dam site this week for first time in century [ *** GALLERY *** ]

PORT ANGLES — Thomas Aldwell’s signature achievement, the damming of a 90-foot canyon on the Elwha River in 1913, will soon be history.

Three excavators working in tandem are nearly done removing the last remnants of the Elwha Dam in the river’s original channel and the hundreds of tons of dirt, logs and concrete dumped into the narrow V-shaped canyon in 1912 to plug a blowout that occurred during construction.

Barnard Construction, the Bozeman, Mont.-based contractor removing the dam and its cousin, the Glines Canyon Dam upstream, plans soon to divert the river into the short canyon, where it will remain for perpetuity.

Swimming salmon

When that happens sometime this week, salmon will be able to swim past the once 108-foot dam for the first time since Aldwell began taming the river to power the North Olympic Peninsula a century ago.

Frances Charles, Lower Elwha Klallam tribal chairwoman, said there are few words that can describe how tribal members will feel when they see the first salmon jumping up the canyon.

“Everybody is going to be ecstatic, overwhelmed with it,” she said.

The tribe has long sought the removal of the two dams.

When the older Elwha Dam was finished 99 years ago 5 miles from the river’s mouth, it decimated the stream’s once legendary salmon runs and deprived the tribe of a valued natural resource.

“There are words you can’t express when you are down there taking a look” at the canyon, Charles said.

“I just feel it’s overwhelming. Beautiful.”

Glines Canyon Dam

The fish will be able to reach as far up the river as the Glines Canyon Dam, about 8.5 miles from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, as well as up many of the river’s tributaries, including Indian Creek, which leads to Lake Sutherland.

Demolition will continue on the dam’s manmade channel to the west until the structure is fully removed in about a year.

The western channel will be filled with soil from the canyon.

Dan Link, project engineer with Barnard, said the canyon will look much like it did more than a century ago when Aldwell, a risk-taking entrepreneur from Canada, eyed it for the Olympic Peninsula’s first hydroelectric dam.

“We’ll excavate it fairly flat,” he said.

The canyon, long buried, easily displays its rugged beauty, only partially veiled by the constant rumbling of excavators and bulldozers.

The sun glimmers off its stone walls, the same natural palisades that will soon reflect and amplify the sound of a roaring, free Elwha.

But once the river returns to its long-awaited home, the canyon will still bear Aldwell’s mark.

Log ends

The ends of logs, stuck into the canyon walls for supporting the dam, can still be seen where they couldn’t be tugged out of the rock.

Link said he found the use of the logs unusual.

“They did it different a hundred years ago,” he said.

If the same construction were done today, the wooden forms would be removed before the concrete settled, he said.

The $325 million federal Elwha River restoration project will continue until early 2014, when the much taller Glines Canyon Dam is fully removed.

The 210-foot Glines Canyon Dam, located in Olympic National Park, was built in 1927.

Demolition started last September.

Removal of the two dams can be viewed on webcams by going to the Peninsula Daily News website at www.peninsuladailynews.com.

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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.

Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.