Skokomish River

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Skokomish River
Skokomish River Delta on Hood Canal
Origin	Mount Skokomish, Olympic Mountains
Mouth	Hood Canal
Basin countries	United States
Length	69 km (43 mi)
Mouth elevation	sea level
Avg. discharge	34.3 m³/s (1,212 ft³/s)
Basin area	588 km² (227 mi²)

The Skokomish River is a river in Washington, United States. It starts by draining the southeast corner of the Olympic Mountains in Mason County. It flows southeasterly entering Hood Canal, a fjord of Puget Sound) near the town of Union, Washington. Lake Cushman and Lake Kokanee are maintained by Cushman Dam No. 1 and Cushman Dam No. 2 respectively on the Skokomish River. Notable for frequent floods, its maximum discharge of 765 m³/s (27,000 ft³/s), recorded on November 5, 1934, was more than twenty times its mean flow. It should also be noted that prior to the construction of the Cushman Hydroelectric Project, the Skokomish River was once Washington State's largest and most productive salmon-producing river.[[1]]

Like most Pacific Northwest rivers, it was named after the native tribe who lived on it, whose name derives from the Salishan words skokom + ish = "brave" + "people" or "strong" + "people". It has the same meaning in the Chinook Jargon.

The confluence of the two branches of the Skokomish River — the North and South Forks — occurs very near Hood Canal. The North Fork is almost totally diverted through Cushman Dam. The South Fork drainage was heavily logged, although logging has been discontinued in National Forest land since the late 1980's. The combination of extensive clearcut logging, the damming of the North Fork, and winter-weather rain patterns are the primary reasons for the flooding that occurs almost every year on the South Fork. In late fall through early spring, storms often come from the southwest. These usually drop the most rain in the vicinity of the Skokomish River due to the topography of the Olympic Peninsula.[[2]]

As a result of the heavy flooding that occurs annually, it has earned the status as the most flood-prone river in Washington State [[3]][[4]]. One notable flood in 1996 closed Highway 101 and Washington State Route 106 for four days, stranding a KOMO TV news crew from Seattle. Typically, these floods on the Skokomish spawn scores of Seattle TV news crews and print journalists to the scene, and is not unheard of for stories of Skokomish River floods by the media to include the joke "Why did the salmon cross the road?" [[5]]