THE DOSEWALLIPS RIVER

There was a record flood in the winter of 1998-1999 that washed out 300 feet of the Dosewallips road. It really wouldn't have been any problem to repair in this age of modern equipment. However, in this age an environmental study must be made before doing anything like that. In reality there were no salmon spawning until the next fall. The public lands seem to be totally governed by so-called environmentalists. This is my opinion, which probably isn't worth anything to anyone but myself. If they think the Dose Road is destroying the wilderness, all they have to do is go up the hillside a short distance above the road and you are into the wilderness. I have done that many times when I was young and hunting. Most of it has never been touched by man and a lot of it has never been seen by man or women.

Erosion is supposed to kill salmon. I wonder if that is true why there is a salmon left alive. From the beginning of the rivers and salmon the rivers have been flooding during most of the salmon runs. Until 100 years ago the rivers on the Olympic Peninsula were lined with 4 to 8 ft by 200 ft trees. During a flood some of them would wash out and fall into the river causing a log jam which in turn would form a dam. The river would overflow and wash out a new channel. Talk about erosion! This happening in salmon spawning season. This is not just a theory, this is proven history.

We bought our property in 1941. The river ran 150 ft south of our house. For the past 100 years or more it had been meandering from there to 300 ft south cutting channels, filling them and cutting new ones. In November of 1949 we had a heavy snow shortly after Thanksgiving. The snow went to the beach. Then it warmed up and we had heavy rain that lasted several hours, melting all the new snow, even high into the mountains. This caused the largest flood of this river in civilized history. Most of the upper Dose Valley was covered with water. The river was cutting a new channel and headed for our house. Lucky for us it ran off and the river went bank into its channel in about 4 hours.

It had cut toward the county road about 75 ft. My father-in-law Fay Bunnell decided to see what could be done about the situation. About 500 ft above our house the river had been diverted by a log jam about 100 years before. We went to the County Commissioners, contacted Flood Control and the Dept. of Fisheries. We worked out a plan to remove the log jam and divert the river back to its original channel. Our permit was okayed for September 1, 1950. We hired a D 7 Cat and dug out the log jam. Some four and five foot old growth logs, still solid, had to be cut and yarded out. We fell the alder and maple trees out of the old channel and drug the big logs to the north side of the stream bed, tied them up with one and a half inch cable and waited for the next flood. Some time in November it came and the river moved back into its original channel where it remains today. In spite of all that there were still huge runs of salmon.

I still wonder why the replacement of 300 feet of road could do all of the damage environmentalists claim it would do. Most so called environmentalists don't know beans about the environment. They parrot what they hear and want to believe. Their main objective seems to be against progress and anything constructive. They want control and what a mess we will be in if they are ever in full control. We agree with our late friend Bill Whitney who said, "We are all environmentalists but not to the point of stupidity."

We live with and work with the environment every day. There is only one who will ever control it and that is the creator who is in full control of it all, believe it or not.

By Vern Bailey (October 2, 2003)

Back to the Focus Point - Dosewallips River Road

---

+ About the effort to rebuild the historic Dosewallips River Trail.

---

Comments? Questions? Send your message to the Webmaster

Copyright, 2003-2004, BrinnonProsperity.org. All rights reserved. Created by newWebMakers.com