Chimacum Creek

Chimacum Creek is a stream in Jefferson County, Washington, United States. Located on the base of the Quimper Peninsula in the northeast of the larger Olympic Peninsula, it originates from a series of springs and ponds in the forested hills south of Discovery Bay. It flows south from its source before turning east and eventually north, taking in a number of small tributaries before it enters the broad Chimacum Valley, a fertile agricultural region where the stream has been extensively channelized. After taking in its largest tributary, the East Fork Chimacum near the community of Chimacum, it enters a tight ravine where it meets the sea in the community of Port Hadlock-Irondale, creating a small estuary and an area of intertidal wetland as it enters Port Townsend Bay.

The topography of the watershed was shaped heavily by the advance and retreat of the Cordilleran ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum, which deposited large amounts of glacial outwash and sedimentary material. The area was the traditional lands of the eponymous Chemakum people, who were devastated by disease and massacres by surrounding groups shortly prior to Euro-American colonization in the 1850s. The watershed was dredged and channelized during the early 20th century, turning the formerly meandering and heavily forested creek into a relatively straight channel through the farms along the valley. Environmental restoration projects in the late 20th and early 21st centuries have helped protect the spawning runs of coho salmon to the creek.