Quinault Tribe builds new village site away from rising seas

With winter storms and high tides approaching, the Quinault Indian Nation continues efforts to relocate its seaside villages.

In recent years, the village of Taholah, the largest on the Quinault Indian Reservation on Washington’s Olympic coast, has had to evacuate when waves overtopped the seawall separating it from the Pacific Ocean.

For about a decade, the tribe has been working to move the village of 660 people out of reach of rising seas and tsunamis.

Construction crews installed streets, sidewalks, and underground utilities in the fall of 2023 for a neighborhood of 59 homes about 1 mile inland.

“We went from forest land about three years ago, and now we have a finished product full of street signs and sidewalks and drainages, so it's a really cool sight to see,” said Ryan Hendricks, a Quinault Tribal Council member and former construction manager.

Hendricks lives in the lower portion of Taholah Village, where homes and businesses sit about 6 feet above the average daily high tide. An expanding ocean, fueled by global warming, is gradually pushing sea levels higher, while king tides that come every November, December, and January can quickly push seas much higher for short stretches. So can winter storms.

Satellite images show the top of the seawall that protects Taholah from the surf is now littered with logs tossed there by the ocean.