• Olympic: Three Parks in One

    Olympic

    National Park Washington

  • Olympic Hot Springs Road Closed

    The Elwha Valley's Olympic Hot Springs Road is closed to public entry beyond the Altair Campground during removal of the Glines Canyon Dam. Olympic Hot Springs is not accessible from the Elwha.

Historic Range in the Elwha - Steelhead

Historical Range:
Historically, steelhead occupied an extensive range of the Elwha River, traveling to the far reaches near headwaters. The Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams have limited wild steelhead production enormously. Although the Elwha is still the largest producer of hatchery steelhead in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, dependence on the small gene pools of hatchery stocks can lead to diseases and other problems.

Diagram:
—The red line represents the theoretical range of steelhead in the Elwha River before construction of the two dams.

 
Historic steelhead range in the Elwha
Historic range of steelhead in the Elwha River.
 

Click here to learn more about steelhead!

 

 

 
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This webpage was made possible in part by a grant from Washington's National Park Fund.

Did You Know?

star-shaped purple flowers growing in a crack of a rock

That the Piper's bellflower is unique to the Olympic Mountains? Named after an early Olympic peninsula botanist, the Piper's bellflower grows in cracks and crevices of high elevation rock outcrops.