Field Guide to Field Guides: Salmon & Rivers

Front

Find Your Guide

If you are…	Start Here	Go Deeper
At the River	Mac's Salmon & Trout of N.A. Craig MacGowan Laminated, waterproof, fits in a vest pocket	Circled Life Susan McDougall Seven salmonids of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, one essay each
On the Elwha	Elwha: A River Reborn Lynda V. Mapes The record of the dam removal, in photographs	Mountain in the Clouds Bruce Brown The 1982 classic that saw it all coming
Understanding Treaty Rights	Where the Salmon Run Trova Heffernan The life of Billy Frank Jr.	Treaty Justice Charles Wilkinson The Boldt Decision and what followed
Curious About Salmon	Pacific Salmon Field Guide Godwin & Krkosek Every species in your pocket, painted by Joseph Tomelleri	Salmon: A Fish, the Earth… Mark Kurlansky Accessible entry to the whole story

If You Can Only Pick One

Salmon, Cedar, Rock & Rain: Washington's Olympic Peninsula cover

★ Staff Pick

Salmon, Cedar, Rock & Rain: Washington's Olympic Peninsula · Tim McNulty

The Olympic Peninsula, told through the things that sustain it: salmon, rivers, rain forests, mountains, and the people whose lives are bound up with them. Tim McNulty's extraordinary portrait of the place we call home.

Elwha Starter Pack

Elwha: A River Reborn+River's Gifts

The story of the Elwha's restoration, told through reporting and photographs, paired with an illustrated version for readers of any age. Two ways into the same remarkable story.

River Reader Pack

Mink River+What the River Keeps

Brian Doyle's mythical Oregon coast and Cheryl Grey Bostrom's real Olympic Peninsula. The PNW river fiction duo — one funny and mystical, one quiet and true.

Back

More Field Guides

Coastal Juvenile Salmonids
Pollard · The pocket key for creek volunteers

Mac's Salmon & Trout of N.A.
CardMacGowan · Laminated, waterproof, pocket-sized

Pacific Salmon Field Guide
Godwin & Krkosek · Pocket guide, Tomelleri illustrations

Coastal Fishes of PNW
Lamb & Edgell · Revised & expanded

Beyond the Field Guide

The Elwha Shelf

Mountain in the Clouds
Brown — The 1982 search for the wild salmon, and what it found

Breaking Ground
Mapes — The Tse-whit-zen discovery that changed everything

West of the Elwha
Alexander — Life in the valley before the dams came out

River's Gifts
Newman — The Elwha story for all ages

Treaty Rights & Sovereignty

Where the Salmon Run
Heffernan — Billy Frank Jr. and the fishing rights movement

Treaty Justice
Wilkinson — The Boldt Decision and its legacy

My Heart is Good
Charles — A S'Klallam elder on treaty rights and a fishing community

Water Remembers
Cordalis — A Yurok fight for the Klamath River

Indian Fishing
Stewart — Traditional methods, beautifully illustrated

Salmon Science

Circled Life
McDougall — Our strait, its seven salmonids, a neighbor who knows them. Start here.

Salmon Without Rivers
Lichatowich — Where the salmon crisis began

King of Fish
Montgomery — The thousand-year run, from Europe to the Pacific

Stronghold
Malarkey — The campaign to protect the last wild salmon rivers

The Dam Wars

Encounters with the Archdruid
McPhee — Puts a conservationist and a dam builder in the same room

A River Lost
Harden — The life and death of the Columbia

Cracked
Hawley — The future of dams in a hot, chaotic world

The Emerald Mile
Fedarko — The fastest ride through the Grand Canyon

River Fiction

Mink River
Doyle — Mythical Oregon coast. Funny, heartbreaking, perfect.

Deep River
Marlantes — Finnish immigrants on the Columbia. An epic.

Sometimes a Great Notion
Kesey — The Stamper family and an Oregon coastal river

A River Runs Through It
Maclean — The most quoted book in the American river canon

What the River Keeps
Bostrom — The Olympic Peninsula, now. Quiet and true.

The River Now

Is a River Alive?
Macfarlane — Should rivers have legal rights? Three rivers, one question.

In Praise of Floods
Scott — What rivers do when we let them

Big River
Moskowitz — The Columbia Basin now, in photographs

Witness to Water
McBride — The Colorado, source to vanished delta, by packraft, on foot and from a small plane

This handout is about the story that runs through this particular store, in this particular town, on this particular river — cross-checked with the reading list our neighbors at the North Olympic Salmon Coalition keep. The wider river canon has its own shelves here. Just ask.

A Field Guide to Field Guides · No. 6

Built by Steven Pate for Port Book and News · rev. 2026-10-30