Ghost Run of the Cowlitz
Published by the Cowlitz Historical Quarterly 1998. Volume 40, Number 2, pages 5-21. Richard A. Hinrichsen Reproduced by permission of the Cowlitz County Historical Society Sketch of Eulachon by Meriwether Lewis, 25 February 1806. Introduction E veryone knows about endangered salmon these days. They are much in the news as the Northwest’s poster child for the Endangered Species Act. But as far as our local history is concerned, it is not the salmon that reigns, but another, less understood, silvery migrant – the Columbia River smelt. In spite of their importance, though, the memory of smelt runs of the Cowlitz River, much like the run itself, seems imperiled of late. Who is now aware that in 1806 explorer Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark fame) described and sketched a smelt in his journal, hailing it as the best fish he had ever tasted? [1] Or that newsreels shot as early as 1919 carried news of the Cowlitz smelt run throughout the United States and abroad?