Salmon River — Main

About

Salmon River, Idaho — 1980 Frank Church Wilderness, River of No Return. The Salmon's story begins in the Sawtooth country, where the river gathers near the confluence of the Sawtooth and Alturas lakes in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area and runs 425 miles to meet the Snake. Along the way it drains some 14,000 square miles of central Idaho, splitting the states of Lemhi and Idaho counties with a canyon deep enough to have turned back the first U.S. expedition to reach it. USGS gauge 13302500 tracks the flow, averaging around 5,800 CFS against a historic figure near 5,200; paddlers look for the 3,000-to-12,000 CFS band that makes the classic runs sing.

The river reads as a sequence of distinct characters. The Upper Salmon, from Salmon City to North Fork, moves through open valley at Class I–II. Below, the Middle Fork pours in — a meeting of the giants — bumping the water to Class II–III. From North Fork to Riggins comes the Main Salmon Canyon, the Class III–IV heart of the run, before the Lower Salmon eases back to Class II–III on its way from Riggins to the Snake.

Human history here runs long and deep. The Nez Percé — the Nimiipu — lived in the canyon for thousands of years, drawing on the river's salmon runs. When Lewis and Clark surveyed the water in 1805, they named it the River of No Return for rapids they judged un-runnable and followed the Salmon and the Snake toward the Pacific. The mountains that walled off the river also held gold: the 1860–1910 era saw extensive mining across the Salmon River basin. The surrounding watershed was logged from the 1830s through the 1920s, feeding regional sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations until the old-growth stands were exhausted around 1910 and state forestry conservation took hold.

Modern boating arrived in 1929, when the first inflatable craft ferried men from Shoup downstream to Riggins, opening a corridor that adventurers had long shunned. But the twentieth century also cost the river dearly. The 1930s brought the first major irrigation projects, and between 1955 and 1967 three Hells Canyon dams rose on the Snake, severing the Salmon's anadromous runs and blocking chinook salmon, sockeye, and steelhead from historic spawning grounds.

Conservation answered. In 1980 the Central Idaho Wilderness Act enshrined the surrounding country as the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness — 2.3 million acres named for Senator Frank Church of Idaho, and the largest wilderness area in the contiguous United States. The Salmon was designated a National Wild and Scenic River the same year. Since then, restoration has become the river's ongoing work: the Salmon River Restoration, active from 1984 onward, ranks among the largest dam-removal and river-restoration efforts in U.S. history, while more recent regional programs have pursued streambank stabilization, native fish restocking, nutrient reduction, and water-quality improvements. Today the Salmon endures as a premier steelhead, salmon, and trout fishery — a wild corridor that still carries the name two explorers gave it more than two centuries ago.