Seattle Times: Dam is gone, salmon are back

Seattle Times:

For more than a century, salmon followed Goldsborough Creek as it passed through the grounds of a sawmill, into the middle of Shelton and toward the woods beyond — before bumping smack into a 30-foot-high wall called the Goldsborough Dam.

And for decades, the salmon runs limped along, blocked from prime spawning grounds by the manmade barrier of wood and concrete.

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It can take salmon a decade or more to fully occupy habitat previously blocked by dams, rockslides or glaciers, said George Pess, a biologist for the federal Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

Still, the tribe sees the project as a success story. Some tribal families have traditionally called the banks of Goldsborough Creek home, and the tribe has fishing rights in Puget Sound that include areas populated by salmon from the creek.

Charlene Krise, a historian who serves on the tribal council, said one of her uncles used to sit on a concrete bridge over the creek in Shelton and wave to people going by. One day Krise asked a relative why he did that.

“That was his family’s property and he wants to be remembered being by that creek,” Krise recalled being told.

“It has a sentimentalness even today.”