The matriarchal culture of the Coos people evolved over millennia. Their way of being was molded by their direct relationship with the land. They recognized the value of what sustained them, the land, plants, animals, fish and water. Throughout the year the villagers would collect shellfish and dig camas roots to provide their food sustenance. During the salmon migrations their weirs trapped enough fish to provide an abundance of food, year after year. In the summer months tribe's people would travel to their inland camps on a network of trails following small streams and open ridges to hunt wild game and gather berries and roots. Foods were dried and stored for the long winter months to supplement the dried salmon, elk, deer and eel.
Coos Bay first drew the attention of Anglo-European developers in 1853. The discovery of coal and gold along the coast provided the initial incentives for settlement. But it would be timber that would drive Coos Bays biggest boon. On Coos River the cities of Charleston, Coos Bay and North Bend were constructed on top of large villages which had thrived for thousands of years.
The hand of development fell heavily on the Coos watershed.
Beginning in 1857, major portions of the estuary shoreline began to be converted to industrial uses including sawmills, wood product manufacturing, and, continuing through World War II, wooden ship building. By the mid-20th century, Coos Bay had become one of the largest lumber shipping ports in the world. Raw copper ore loaded with heavy metals sourced from the Bingham Mine in Utah was loaded on vessels in the upper bay. Coos Bay was also the site of two different pulp mills, both of which have now been dismantled. Simultaneously, near the mouth of the estuary the town of Charleston supported major sport and commercial fisheries.
On the upper rivers, splash dams were constructed to facilitate the movement of logs downstream to the mills along the bay by the spring freshets. During low flow periods in the summer, dams were constructed in multiple locations on the main rivers and many tributaries. Logs were yarded to the watercourses and dumped into the streambed behind the dams. When the fall rains began, the dams were sealed and large log-filled ponds formed behind each of them. During the mid-winter high water period, the dams were blasted open and the logs rushed downstream towards Coos Bay in a chaotic churning, grinding mass. This process was extremely destructive of riverine habitat. Spawning gravels for salmon and steelhead were scoured out, leaving many once productive areas as nothing more than bedrock-lined flumes. Riffle and pool stream structure essential to the survival of salmon fry and fingerlings was greatly reduced. Large amounts of tree bark and other woody debris were deposited in the estuary which eventually caused depleted dissolved oxygen levels. None the less, this method of transporting logs was an annual occurrence until 1955.
By 1983, major industrial activity adjacent to the estuary had essentially ceased. The primary cause was that the world-famous old-growth Douglas-fir timber was essentially liquidated and the foreign markets dropped dramatically. Major sawmills and wood processing plants, as well as the existing pulp mills, were closed and their physical plants torn down and removed. The number of ships annually entering the Port dropped from over 500 to under 50. A sense of calm, and the feeling of the beginning of a healing process, descended over the Coos watershed.
Given all the impacts it has absorbed, including estuary landfill changes as well as chemical pollutants and the disruption of ecological processes, the Coos Bay estuary has surprisingly survived with a modicum of its productivity intact. It still maintains viable runs of salmon and steelhead, still is able to support commercial oyster operations as well as recreational clamming and crabbing, as well as sport and commercial fishing. But it is a compromised and damaged ecosystem with great uncertainty as to its ability to absorb further insults without reaching a threshold beyond which irreversible and catastrophic impacts would occur. There is simply no margin left for trial and error. The future viability of the Coos watershed depends entirely upon proceeding carefully based on a sound and comprehensive understanding of the current condition of the ecosystem.
