The remote and rugged Klamath River in Oregon and California, one of the mightiest in the American West and an ancient lifeline to Indigenous tribes, is running free again, mostly, for the first time in 100 years after the recent removal of four major dams.
At the burbling aquifer near Chiloquin, Ore., that is considered the headwaters, a sacred spot for native people, a group of kayakers, mostly Indigenous youth from the river’s vast basin began to paddle on Thursday. Ages 13 to 20, they had learned to kayak for this moment.
Stroke by stroke, mile by mile, day by day, they plan to reach the salty water of the rugged Northern California coast, more than 300 miles away, in mid-July.
If all goes as planned, the kayakers will pass the rehabilitated sites of the largest dam-removal project in U.S. history. They will pass salmon swimming upstream in places that the fish had not been able to reach since the early 1900s. They will pass through the ancient territory of their tribes — the Klamath, Shasta, Karuk, Hoopa Valley and Yurok among them.
And when they reach the wide mouth of the river at the Pacific Ocean near Klamath, Calif., they will be celebrated as the first to descend the full length of the Klamath, source to sea, since the dams went up and pinched life from the water.
“I’m really excited to be on the river with friends, celebrating this huge accomplishment that our people have been fighting for forever,” said Ruby Rain Williams, 18, of the Karuk tribe.
The sky was blue. The mood was, at turns, celebratory and solemn. The colorful kayaks glided across a pool of crystal water, headed downstream.
Water flows again
To’nehwan Jayden Dauz, a 15-year-old from the Hoopa Valley tribe, bounced through a Class IV rapid that didn’t exist a year ago, in a narrow canyon where one of the dams fell. Ruby followed, emerging from a stretch of steep white water with a wide grin. The expedition was two days away. Scouting the difficult section of rapids from a raft, Keeya Wiki, a 17-year-old Yurok, whooped at her new friends.
All three grew up along the water, in different tribes, hearing stories of ancestors who could walk across the Klamath on the backs of so many salmon. Today, everyone was more likely to get dinner from a local convenience store than from the river.
The arrival of white settlers, starting with a group of beaver trappers in 1826, interrupted the rhythms of life here for the next 200 years. Gold miners and timber companies came. Farmers and ranchers arrived, sucking and diverting water from the river and draining the fish-rich wetlands near the headwaters.
The first hydroelectric dam, Copco 1 (named for the California Oregon Power Co.), was built in 1918. Others followed: Copco 2 (1925), J.C. Boyle (1958) and Iron Gate (1964). They were 400 vertical feet of water stoppers and lake makers within a 45-mile stretch straddling the Oregon-California border. Salmon had no way to get through.
For decades, tribes and environmentalists, seeing and feeling an ecological and cultural disaster unfold, demanded the removal of dams and the restoration of the river. Voices went largely unheard until 2002, when tens of thousands of dead salmon and steelhead trout washed up on the lower banks of the river.
The dam-removal movement gained momentum, and politicians and other power brokers slowly acknowledged that the relatively low amounts of power generated by the dams in such a rural region was not enough reason to continue suffocating the river and its tributaries.
In small creeks that feed into the Upper Klamath, hundreds of miles from the ocean, salmon were spotted 11 days after the last dam fell last fall.
By then, a small group of river runners, having recruited and extensively trained about three dozen Indigenous teens growing up along the Klamath, had grand plans to be the first group to paddle the length of the freed river.
Two smaller dams remain, upriver from the dismantled ones and not far from the headwaters. The paddlers will have to portage around the dams. The tribes would like them gone, too.
Then “all of our relatives can be connected again,” said William Ray, Jr., the chairman of the Klamath Tribes, a consortium of the Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin people.
Last Tuesday, some of those teens, preparing for the expedition and practicing their skills, paddled through a section that had been the floor of Copco Lake for more than a century. They could see the fading shoreline of the old lake, as the river found its old course.
Water has memory, tribal elders say.
On riffling current, the paddlers passed houses that had stood lakeside for decades, now sitting far from the river’s edge, their old docks leading nowhere. They passed a graveyard of bald trees, still standing, that had been submerged for years. A boat anchor hung, tangled, on one of the naked gray limbs.
Entering Kikacéki Canyon, they passed the site of Copco 1. Almost all signs of the massive structure have been removed. This year’s river runners might not realize it had been there just last summer.
A few miles downriver, Copco 2 once diverted all of the water out of the canyon, through tunnels and pipes to a power station, where the water re-entered. For generations, the dam left a surreal dry stretch of riverbed in the heart of a twisting walled canyon lined by extraordinary columnar basalt formations.
Alders and cottonwoods overtook the dry channel, threatening to clog the natural river route. Part of the restoration plan meant cutting down about 1,000 of the trees and airlifting them out of the canyon by helicopter.
Now the river that had carved the stone canyon runs wild again. The teens looked up in wonder. Then they put their heads down and paddled.
‘Our grandkids will know’
Rush Sturges, 40, is a professional kayaker and filmmaker who grew up on California’s Salmon River, a tributary of the Klamath. His parents ran a kayak school for 40 years. Mr. Sturges knew all about the fight to remove the dams.
“But I didn’t know a single Indigenous kayaker before this,” he said.
In 2021, he met Weston Boyles, 38, the founder and executive director of Ríos to Rivers, a global organization advocating Indigenous youth and rivers around the world through education and exchange programs. They discussed life after the dams.
Shouldn’t Native children be the first to paddle the full stretch of the re-flowing river?
Paddle Tribal Waters was born. It soon recruited Danielle Frank, a 21-year-old Hoopa Valley tribe member known as Ducky and a dynamo of activism and advocacy work in the Klamath Basin. She helped connect the organizers to the tribes.
Despite deep and ancient connections to the river, most native people along the Klamath had never been in a kayak. Kayaks were something that floated by, holding outsiders. White water was something to fear, not enjoy.
“Recreation is a luxury that wasn’t afforded to us,” said John Acuna, 30, also a member of the Hoopa Valley tribe. Three years after being introduced to kayaking, he is a certified instructor and a leader on the expedition.
“We have an opportunity to redefine what our relationship to the river is,” he said.
The long-term plan for Paddle Tribal Waters is to connect children to the rejuvenated river. Some students, like Jayden — “one of the most talented kayakers I’ve ever seen learn the sport,” Mr. Sturges said — have organized kayak clubs in their tribes.
The short-term plan was less philosophical. “We wanted to train these kids to lead this first descent,” Mr. Sturges said.
With stretches that include technical and dangerous Class IV rapids (Class VI is not navigable), the Klamath is not for novices. So Paddle Tribal Waters ran multiweek summer programs in 2022, 2023 and 2024, teaching 45 teens how to paddle white water. At night, they took tribe-led classes on activism, ecosystems and cultural knowledge. Some then took part in semester-long school-and-paddle programs around the world.
About 14 youth and seven staff members plan to paddle the entire stretch of river. Another 30 or so teens will join the party midway. They will camp on the river’s banks. There will be planned ceremonial meetings and meals with tribal members and families. Food and gear will be shuttled in at various access points, part of a coordinated and complex logistical challenge.
Along the way, the young kayakers will be encouraged to help name rapids, maybe in native languages, so that the many commercial outfits that run the river in rafts and kayaks might adopt them.
The group is scheduled to arrive at the Pacific Ocean ahead of a large-scale celebration on July 12 and a symposium the next day.
But that was still 300 miles and 30 days away. Scarlett Schroeder, 13, and Coley Miller, 14, who belong to tribes on the Upper Klamath, daydreamed about reaching the ocean a month from now.
“We’re definitely going to go down in history,” Scarlett said.
“Our grandkids will know,” Coley said.
“Our great-, great-, great-grandkids will know,” Scarlett said.
On Thursday at noon, at the headwaters near Chiloquin, Ore., not far from Crater Lake National Park, the kayakers and supporters gathered in a circle near the water’s edge. Leaders from the Klamath tribes took turns explaining the significance of the “sacred journey.”
Many wore shirts that read “Undammed.” One wore a hat that read “Make American Native Again.” One leader told the group that she was nervous for the group to go, but knew that the paddlers were brave.
A water song was sung. The smoking root of wild celery was passed and spread around the body of each paddler.
Soon, the kayakers were sitting low in their colorful boats and pointed toward the open water. Jeff Mitchell, a former chairman of the Klamath Tribes, leaned against a pine tree, holding a walking stick in one hand, an eagle wing in the other. He had not known he would see this day.
“Think of all the Yurok, Hoopa, Karuk and Klamath people who worked on this for the last 30 years,” he said. “It’s amazing.”
A young couple wandered up, curious about what was happening. Mr. Mitchell explained the expedition, the dams coming down, the meaning of it all.
“You’re witnessing the first descent from the headwaters to the ocean,” he said. The pair nodded. Mr. Miller smiled.
The kayakers gathered in a circle in the water. They let out a collective shout, then began to paddle away. Soon they disappeared around the bend, headed for history.
John Branch writes feature stories for The Times on a wide swath of topics, including sports, climate and politics. He is based in California.
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