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Chehalem Creek is a tributary of the
Willamette River The Willamette River ( ) is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward ...
in Yamhill County in the
U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...
of
Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idah ...
. It drains a watershed of , about 68 square miles. Its headwaters rise on the eastern slope of the
Northern Oregon Coast Range The Northern Oregon Coast Range is the northern section of the Oregon Coast Range, in the Pacific Coast Ranges physiographic region, located in the northwest portion of the state of Oregon, United States. This section of the mountain range, part ...
above Larsen Reservoir southeast of Gaston and discharge into the Willamette near Newberg. The word "Chehalem" is a corruption of the Atfalati Indian word "'Chahelim'", a name given in 1877 to one of the bands of Atfalati.


History

The indigenous Che-ahm-ill people of the "Yam Hills" area were a sub-group of the Kalapuyan culture. They occupied the valley at the time of Euro-American contact and for several decades afterward until their numbers dwindled and the few survivors were removed with other tribes to reservations, primarily the
Grand Ronde Reservation The Grand Ronde Community is an Indian reservation located on several non-contiguous sections of land in southwestern Yamhill County and northwestern Polk County, Oregon, United States, about east of Lincoln City, near the community of Grand ...
in the Oregon Coast Range. By 1812
Pacific Fur Company The Pacific Fur Company (PFC) was an American fur trade venture wholly owned and funded by John Jacob Astor that functioned from 1810 to 1813. It was based in the Pacific Northwest, an area contested over the decades between the United Kingdom of ...
traders entered the Willamette Valley under the leadership of Donald Mackenzie—this was the first documented contact between
Kalapuyan Kalapuyan (also Kalapuya) is a small extinct language family that was spoken in the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon, United States. It consists of three languages. The Kalapuya language is currently in a state of revival. Kalapuyan descend ...
and European people.
Ewing Young Ewing Young (1799-February 9, 1841) was an American fur trapper and trader from Tennessee who traveled in what was then the northern Mexico frontier territories of Santa Fe de Nuevo México and Alta California before settling in the Oregon Country. ...
, after leading pioneering fur brigades in California, came to Portland in 1834 and settled on the west bank of the
Willamette River The Willamette River ( ) is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward ...
near the mouth of Chehalem Creek, opposite of Champoeg. Young's home is believed to be the first house built by European-Americans on that side of the river.


Ecology

The first white explorers to the valley in the 1820s reported large prairies, oak savannas, and thick smoke from widespread burning by the Indians during the late summer. When Indian populations were decimated by European diseases, a
coast Douglas-fir ''Pseudotsuga menziesii'' var. ''menziesii'', commonly known as Coast Douglas-fir, Pacific Douglas-fir, Oregon pine, or Douglas spruce, is an evergreen conifer native to western North America from west-central British Columbia, Canada southward ...
(''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') forest matured over a last century and a half since there was no longer suppression of the natural forest by Indians. Indian-set fires were common since at least 1647 but ceased after 1848 according to tree ring analysis or dendrochronology. This changed in the 20th century when the timber industry logged the woods. Writing in 1902, J. E. Kirkwood explained that in the 50 years since the first considerable immigration into western Oregon, most of the original forest had been cleared in the lowlands. A 1947
Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the m ...
report, stated that the forests of Yamhill County were "seriously depleted" and the number of jobs in forestry and wood products was expected to drop due to "reduced lumber production resulting from exhaustion of local timber supplies." In the 1980s stocking of hatchery coho salmon and rainbow trout discontinued after biologists began to question detrimental interactions between wild (native) and stocked species. In 1999
steelhead Steelhead, or occasionally steelhead trout, is the common name of the anadromous form of the coastal rainbow trout or redband trout (O. m. gairdneri). Steelhead are native to cold-water tributaries of the Pacific basin in Northeast Asia an ...
(''Oncorhyncus mykiss'') in Willamette River
distinct population segment {{no footnotes, date=February 2018 A distinct population segment (DPS) is the smallest division of a taxonomic species permitted to be protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. ''Species'', as defined in the Act for listing purposes, is a ...
were listed as threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act. The listing was continued in 2006 and 2011. The Chehalem Valley has several native anadromous species: winter steelhead,
Pacific lamprey The Pacific lamprey (''Entosphenus tridentatus'') is an anadromous parasitic lamprey from the Pacific Coast of North America and Asia. It is a member of the Petromyzontidae family. The Pacific lamprey is also known as the three-tooth lamprey and ...
(''Lampetra tridentata''), and
spring chinook salmon The Chinook salmon (''Oncorhynchus tshawytscha'') is the largest and most valuable species of Pacific salmon in North America, as well as the largest in the genus ''Oncorhynchus''. Its common name is derived from the Chinookan peoples. Othe ...
(''Oncorhynchus tshawytscha''). The Upper Willamette River
evolutionary significant unit An evolutionarily significant unit (ESU) is a population of organisms that is considered distinct for purposes of conservation. Delineating ESUs is important when considering conservation action. This term can apply to any species, subspecies, ...
of chinook salmon are also listed as threatened (2011). Because
coastal cutthroat trout The coastal cutthroat trout (''Oncorhynchus clarkii clarkii''), also known as the sea-run cutthroat trout, blue-back trout or harvest trout, is one of the several subspecies of cutthroat trout found in Western North America. The coastal cutthroa ...
(''Oncorhynchus clarki clarki'') are more widely distributed in the small streams of the Chehalem watershed than any other salmonid, the effects of habitat restoration programs can be more readily discerned by looking at the effects on trout, the latter an excellent indicator of water quality. The cutthroat are non-migratory.


Beavers

When a
beaver Beavers are large, semiaquatic rodents in the genus ''Castor'' native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. There are two extant species: the North American beaver (''Castor canadensis'') and the Eurasian beaver (''C. fiber''). Beavers a ...
family built several dams on a tributary of Chehalem Creek upstream from the West Sheridan Street culvert, a large beaver pond formed and threatened the road bed. The city hired a professional trapper to rid the stream of beavers. However, the city reversed its order to kill the beavers when local citizens complained about the inhumane nature of using a trap likely to drown the beaver and also that wildlife had been resurgent since the beavers arrived. A third option might be to consider installation of a
flow device Flow devices or beaver deceivers are man-made solutions to North American beaver, beaver-related flooding problems. Traditional solutions have involved the trapping and removal of all the beavers in an area. While this is sometimes necessary, it ...
that uses pipe levelers and fencing to regulate the water level of beaver dams and keep
culvert A culvert is a structure that channels water past an obstacle or to a subterranean waterway. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe, reinforced concrete or other material. In the United Kingdo ...
s open.


See also

*
List of rivers of Oregon This is a partial listing of rivers in the state of Oregon, United States. This list of Oregon rivers is organized alphabetically and by tributary structure. The list may also include streams known as creeks, brooks, forks, branches and prongs, a ...


References


External links


Greater Yamhill Watershed Council
* {{authority control Rivers of Yamhill County, Oregon Rivers of Oregon