Where U.S. Highway 101 crosses the Elwha River, the water carries sediment freed by the removal of two upstream dams. With the dams gone, sand and gravel long trapped behind them now reach the sea, rebuilding beaches and gravel bars at the river mouth that had been starved of sediment for roughly a century, reshaping the nearshore coastline.
When you cross the Elwha, glance down at the water and know you're looking at a river that's busy reinventing itself. For most of the last century its current ran clear because two big dams upstream trapped all its sand and gravel. Now that those walls are gone, the freed river is hauling that load back down to the sea again, and out at the river mouth fresh beaches and gravel bars are piling up that hadn't been fed in a hundred years. The coastline itself is being rebuilt, grain by grain, by a river finally allowed to do its job.
Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS - Pacific Region) · Public Domain
