Historic, maybe because it took over a year to get this installed on the Port Angeles, Washington waterfront! I’m not complaining at all – because for me it was fun and meaningful. I learned a lot.

So, with a bit of funding from Olympic National Park and guidance and direction from the Feiro Marine Life Center – text by Deborah Moriarty and Betsy Wharton, photos from a bunch of dead photographers plus two that are still alive, and this all came together nicely.

While the only thing I PAINTED was those two little black bands on the wall, I spent some considerable time in the Port Angeles Historical Society with my flatbed scanner. Most of the photos were very old and only 8″x10″ or less. Technology went to work when I clicked the button, and what seemed like hours later I had some pretty amazingly scans. While that was going on, I had the rest of the collection to myself – oh boy! One of the scans was 8 feet long, and most were more than 36″ on the long side, so, that’s when the work began for me. Back in my studio, I spent many hours (I should underline MANY) going back and forth across these old scratched up images removing hairs, cuts, thumbprints (whose we’ll never know), tears, frayed edges, bug squashes – and in the end I think the results looked like they were taken last week with the highest quality camera.

(Here’s a tourist immediately enthralled by the quality and detail of these old images.) After fretting over the text, Deb and Betsy refined it to a very high degree of quality – and that’s from me who does this stuff daily. This is good – and they should be proud!

Oh, but I didn’t tell you the photo’s story. The Elwha Dams have now been torn down on the biggest river on the Olympic Peninsula. These dams have been here almost a century and provided electricity that made Port Angeles a real city, lighting houses, stores and powering mills. But with the dams the salmon runs ended, and so now with the dams gone, the salmon are IMMEDIATELY coming back. Only a few months after the lower dam’s removal, King Salmon are already back above the old dam site. This wheel I’m holding is the same wheel that first turned the power ON almost a century ago, and just a few months ago turned it OFF.

As an artist and naturalist my entire life, I feel so honored to have been apart of this event, the largest dam removal in American history. I consider it part of my legacy. For the dams, park and salmon, I’m nothing but a guy with some skills, but for me – I was there!

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.