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Montesano sits right between two rivers. The Satsop pours out of the hills to the east and the Wynoochee runs down from the Olympic Mountains to the west — and both join the Chehalis within a few miles of town. From there the water carries on to Grays Harbor and out to the Pacific. That whole path is a salmon highway. Follow it.
Tap each stage — or use the arrow keys — to follow a Pacific salmon from a gravel nest in the upper Satsop or Wynoochee all the way to the ocean and back home again.
Just upstream of town, the Satsop tumbles out of the hills to the east and joins the Chehalis near the little community of Satsop. Fed by three forks — East, Middle, and West — it drains nearly 300 square miles. It's one of the basin's great salmon rivers: wild Chinook, coho, and chum, plus steelhead and cutthroat, with the Middle Fork especially known for its wild runs.
Born from rain and snowmelt high in the Olympics, the Wynoochee flows south past Wynoochee Lake and its dam, then joins the Chehalis just west of town — downstream of the Satsop. Its cool, gravelly reaches are prime salmon spawning water. Montesano sits right between the two: the Satsop to the east, the Wynoochee to the west.
The Chehalis drains one of the largest river basins in Washington, gathering water from dozens of tributaries — the Satsop and Wynoochee among them — on its long, winding way to the coast.
Where the river meets the sea, fresh water and salt water mix in a wide estuary. This is where young salmon pause to make the change to ocean life — and where returning adults gather before the run upriver.
The open ocean is the salmon's feeding ground. They spend years out there growing strong before the pull of home turns them back toward the harbor and the rivers.
On the Satsop, the state’s Bingham Creek Hatchery and its Satsop Springs station raise and release hundreds of thousands of young coho, chum, and Chinook into the river every year — helping keep the runs strong alongside the Satsop’s wild fish. It’s the salmon lifecycle happening a short drive from school.
Washington fish hatcheries (WDFW) (opens in a new tab)Several kinds of salmon and sea-run trout use the Satsop, Wynoochee, and Chehalis. A few you might spot:
The biggest of the Pacific salmon. Chinook can travel thousands of miles at sea before returning to spawn.
Bright and acrobatic. Coho fry often spend a full year in our rivers before heading to the ocean.
Tough and numerous. Chum head for salt water soon after emerging, making the run down to Grays Harbor early.
A rainbow trout that goes to sea and comes back. Unlike most salmon, steelhead can spawn more than once.
A smaller native trout of coastal streams — some stay in fresh water their whole lives, some run to the harbor.
Up and down the West Coast, many salmon are protected under the Endangered Species Act because their numbers fell so far. The Chehalis basin is one of the few large river systems in Washington whose salmon are notESA-listed — our runs are still wild and coming back on their own. That’s something to be proud of and to protect: of the basin’s roughly thirty salmon and steelhead stocks, several are counted as “depressed,” and healthy streams are what keep the rest strong.
Salmon share the river with other native travelers — the eel-like Pacific lamprey, and eulachon, a small, oily smelt that once ran so thick it was called the “candlefish” and is now federally threatened. One fish you won’tfind here is sockeye: they need big lakes to grow up in, and our basin doesn’t have them.
Salmon tie the whole watershed together. Clean, cool, shaded streams with gravel beds and fallen logs are what young salmon need to survive — and protecting those streams protects everything downstream of them, all the way to Grays Harbor. When the salmon are healthy, our rivers are healthy.
It’s a story happening right outside the classroom window — and a good reason to take care of the water that runs through home.
Every spring, hundreds of thousands of shorebirds refuel on our mudflats on their way to the Arctic.
The Chehalis is one of Washington’s biggest flood corridors — here’s why, and what we do about it.
A fault offshore, a giant wave in the year 1700, and why we practice for the next one.
The Satsop cooling towers on the skyline — a true story of energy, engineering, and economics.
A logging mill pond right above town became one of Washington’s early state parks.
How a temperate rainforest works — and how it feeds the cold, clean streams salmon need.
North America’s largest elk, in herds around our valley and the Olympic Mountains.
Satsop, Wynoochee, Chehalis — our rivers carry Indigenous names and a deep salmon culture.
Real Montesano numbers to play with — salmon returns, rainfall, elk, floods, and towers.