IN SEPTEMBER OF 1890, Pvt. Harry Fisher, a member of Lt. Joseph P. O’Neil’s U.S. Army expedition that had been sent to map the interior of the Olympic Mountains, was camped on the Queets River in the shadow of Mount Olympus.
The expedition had set out on July 1 from Port Townsend to cut a trail west from Lake Cushman.
Things did not go well.
The captain of the sternwheeler hired to take the expedition to Hoodsport, where a “beautiful, well-cleared trail” led to Lake Cushman, decided to drop them off at Lilliwaup instead.
Misleading explorers to promote real estate was a popular form of amusement at the time.
The expedition’s mules were forced to jump from the deck of the sternwheeler and swim to shore, where they soon found themselves foundering in a yellow jacket-infested morass of blown-down timber known today as the Lilliwaup Swamp.
Upon reaching Lake Cushman, where a member of the expedition “caught a hundred trout in a few hours,” they began cutting a trail and flogging the mules through the Devil’s Club up the narrow canyons of the Skokomish River to the divide above the Hamma Hamma and Duckabush rivers, then dropping into Enchanted Valley on the Quinault, where they decided to head north and climb Mount Olympus.
While bushwhacking beneath the lower ramparts of Olympus, Fisher became separated from the other expedition members, who were attempting to climb the mountain and place a copper box on the summit, then “explore the Queets, Hoh and Quileute rivers.”
That was a tall order for men who were “almost shoeless,” with little to eat but rancid bacon and bear meat.”
After losing Fisher, the rest of the expedition waited for him during lunch and then moved on with no concern for his safety since he was known to be “an old woodsman.”
Indeed, he was.
After spending a day lighting a smoky fire and firing signal shots, Fisher decided to follow the Queets River to the ocean.
His only grub was a grouse he’d shot and a salmon he caught with a spearhead attached to his alpenstock. He declared the salmon was “much better than strong bear or dog flesh.”
On Sept. 26, Fisher was hailed by an Indian, also named Fisher, who offered the lost explorer a canoe ride downriver. Fisher described floating the Queets in the cedar canoe watching his new friend hitting fish 20 or 30 feet away with a forked spear.
After spearing six large salmon, he quit fishing. Fisher describes his “staunch friend” watching the many splashing salmon with “Pride, as a farmer would his cattle.” He mentioned a weir that was built across the river to intercept the salmon.
A recent float down the Queets River revealed a far different world than the one described by Fisher.
There are no V-shaped ripples in water 4 feet deep, made by giant king salmon swimming upriver in uncounted hordes. There were no dead spawners on the shore that used to feed the ecosystem. A Quickie Mart had replaced the fish weir.
The salmon of the Olympic Peninsula were once described as an “inexhaustible resource.”
What could have caused their extinction in the Queets River?
Protected as it is for nearly its entire length within Olympic National Park, the Queets represents the most pristine environment in America.
We have been told by the experts that restoring salmon habitat is the key to their restoration, but if there are no fish in a pristine habitat, what chance do they have in restored habitat?
I hope someone is studying the problem.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.