A Talking History of the Salmon River

            The Salmon River Watershed is unique.  Unlike the other major tributaries of the Klamath River, the Shasta, the Scott and the Trinity, the Salmon does not run through a valley on it’s journeys.  It has no farming, industry or major population within it’s boundaries, keeping it one of the cleanest rivers in the west.  The North Fork of the Salmon has it’s headwaters in the interior of the Marble Mountains Wilderness and the Russian Wilderness.  The South Fork of the Salmon drains the Salmon Mountain Wilderness and the divide of the Trinity Mountain Wilderness.  The whole course of the watershed is steep and rugged.  The Salmon River is a wild, free flowing river.    

South Fork of the Salmon River, above Indian Creek 1890   courtesy of Bill Balfrey     note rocks at river level, river right

Indian tribes in the mid Klamath River area were often small, largely familial villages.  Though tribal languages were different, and are traced to different roots, they shared spiritual and ceremonial ties, trading with neighboring villages in a mutual interdependency.   The Karuk have inhabited some river areas for ten thousand years.           The first white men to see the areas east and west of the Salmon River were hunters and trappers of the Hudson Bay Co. that passed through the Scott Valley in the 1820's and a small troupe of trappers, led by Jedidiah Smith, passed through the Hoopa Valley around the same time, looking for a way out of the Spanish held lands of California and into Oregon Territory.           He had come inland after finding progress up the coast to be time consuming due to the effort of trail blazing around the fallen redwood giants. Smith got no further by the inland route, being blocked by the Siskiyou Mountains, and returned to the coast and the journey north to Oregon.

              The early white men found spring and fall runs of salmon in the hundreds of thousands, blacktail deer, mule deer, elk, antelope black bear, grizzly bear and mountain lions in abundance.

              Gold brought the white man into the country permanently and the Salmon River was subsequently  “discovered” in 1850.  Soon Sawyers Bar had a couple thousand residents and numerous mining related townships dotted the watershed.

              At first the trails into the Salmon River were long established game trails.  Many of the miners arriving from ships on the coast came into the Salmon River along the trail running the ridge of the Salmon Mountains, going up to the ridge at Butler Flat and continuing past Cecilville, on the upper South Fork.  The trails dropped down the major creek drainages to the miners’ sites in the narrow river valley.  In the 1860 presidential election the official polling place was at Election Camp, on the 6000 foot ridge just south of Mary Blaine mountain.  Mary was said to have run a house of ill repute up on the beautiful peak.  One story has Potato Mountain just to the north, getting it’s name from the food stores (mostly potatoes) that had to be dumped to save the pack animals when an early snowstorm forced the pack train to turn around before making it’s destination.

            It wasn’t until 1892 that a road was punched through the wilderness over Etna Summit to connect the two towns of Etna and Forks of Salmon.  The road from Forks to Somes Bar, along the river, wasn’t completed until 1925.  Mules and oxen were used to haul in everything the miners needed for their far flung operations.  Old timers tell of driving the first Model T’s over the steep switchbacks on Etna Summit in reverse, as it was the strongest gear.  A supply coach (truck) used to make the weekly trip from Yreka to Sawyers Bar, to Black Bear Ranch, to the King Solomon Mine and back out again in three days.

              The Eddy Gulch Mine, Black Bear Mine, White Bear Mine, King Solomon Mine and countless others, took millions of dollars of $12 to $16 an ounce gold out of the Salmon River area in the 1850's through the 1890's.  The owner of the Black Bear Mine, John Daggett. was California’s first Lieutenant Governor and a good Knownothing Party member to boot, as were many of the original state government.  His daughter, Hallie Daggett, was the first woman fire lookout.  She was stationed on Blue Ridge Mountain and had an apple orchard at Blue Ridge Ranch that still produces today.

              Folks on the Salmon River, back then, as now, made their living in a variety of ways.  Combining a mix of  logging, mining, fire fighting, fishing, packing, hunting, gardening and gathering allowed people to make a decent, if rugged, life for themselves.  Making it through a winter has always been the test of a newcomer.

The late 1960's brought a new population surge.  Newcomers settled into old mining claims and patented lands, providing a stable, diverse community mix.  The 1970's and 80's saw school populations rise and river communities experienced a cultural revival.  In the late 1970's local citizens groups stopped the Forest Service’s use of herbicides in the watershed.         Isolation, impenetrability and distance from mills and markets kept commercial logging quiet until the 1960's when more easily accessible timber had been logged out.  Until the late 1970's logging was seasonal work and came to a complete halt when the “snow flew”.  After the Hog Fire in 1977 the pace of logging accelerated and by the 1990's the Salmon River watershed had suffered significant environmental impact, to both the quality and diversity of forest and river habitat.              After the Complex Fires in 1987 the Forest Service evicted miners from their small family claims.  The Forks Store burned. The river population plummeted.  2001 saw the closing of the Sawyers Bar School and it’s merging with the Forks of Salmon School District.               The Salmon River has always been a destination for deer and bear hunters, salmon and steelhead fishermen.  It was in the early 1980's that the boom in river recreation brought commercial operations into the Salmon River Watershed.

South Fork of the Salmon River above Indian Creek today note rocks at river level, river right

                 The Salmon River Restoration Council, a community based non-profit organization, was established in 1993.  Their mission has been to protect and restore the Salmon River ecosystem, promote the diversification of the local economic base and promote cooperation and communication between resource managing agencies and resident community members.

              The 751 square mile Salmon River Watershed is currently inhabited by an estimated 300 people.  98.7% of the land is in federal ownership, with 1.3% in private hands.  67% of the Salmon River Watershed is in the Karuk Tribe’s ancestral lands.                        

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