A haven for salmon and steelhead
One of the Lower 48's few rivers designated as Wild and Scenic for its entire length, Oregon's Salmon River is a crown jewel of the Columbia Basin. It rises from glaciers on Mount Hood, flows through a rugged, nearly inaccessible basalt gorge, plunges over six spectacular waterfalls that only the most intrepid will ever see, and churns through old-growth forests of the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness before finally flowing into the Sandy River. All in just 33 river miles. The Salmon, as its name implies, is also one of the most important producers of coho, Chinook and steelhead in the Sandy River system.
In 2024, Western Rivers Conservancy set out to protect a critical property near the Salmon-Sandy confluence on a smaller tributary stream called Sixes Creek. Flowing cold and clean from the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness, Sixes Creek has one of the highest densities of spawning coho salmon in the entire Sandy River system. Where it meets the Salmon River, it opens into a floodplain wetland complex that provides excellent spawning and rearing habitat for salmon and steelhead. This wetland is protected within the Bureau of Land Management's popular Wildwood Recreation Site, which contains educational displays and a network of trails used by some 80,000 people every year.
Protecting habitat, expanding a beloved recreation site
The 283-acre property we set out to conserve lies adjacent to Wildwood and includes 1.5 miles of Sixes Creek immediately upstream. Our goal is to convey the property to the BLM, expanding Wildwood and permanently protecting this important stretch of Sixes Creek. Conserving the property will also keep its maturing forests standing, a tremendous benefit to the creek, its fish and the area's wildlife. Timber harvest on the property would not only degrade habitat in Sixes Creek, but the Wildwood viewshed and the integrity of the Wild and Scenic Salmon River corridor as well.
Lending even greater importance to this effort is the BLM's recent restoration work at the mouth of Sixes Creek, where it reconnected the creek's floodplain with the Salmon River by creating a massive 12-by-40-foot logjam. WRC's conservation of the Sixes Creek property will protect the source-flows of the wetland and allow for additional restoration in the creek's critical lower reach. The project builds on WRC's years of work in the Sandy River basin and will have a significant impact on one of the Pacific Northwest's truly great river systems.
WRC's efforts on Sixes Creek and the Salmon River build on more than two decades of work within Oregon's Sandy River Basin. Our efforts on the Sandy began in 1999 when we partnered with Portland General Electric during its removal of two dams on the Sandy and Little Sandy rivers. Since then, WRC has conserved 4,798 acres of land along the middle Sandy River, protecting vital fish and wildlife habitat and creating outstanding new recreational access for people.
