Kalaloch is a resort, campground and ranger station on the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula, at the mouth of Kalaloch Creek in Olympic National Park, about 24 miles (39 km) southeast of La Push and 19 miles (31 km) north-northwest of Taholah, Washington. The sandy beach at Kalaloch is wide and flat. Although it is exposed to the Pacific Ocean, wave energy is mostly dissipated in a broad surf zone, making it one of the few good landing places between the Quinault River and Hoh River for dugout canoes historically used by the Quinault people. The name Kalaloch is a corruption of the Quinault term k’-E-le-ok, which means ‘a good landing place.’ Kalaloch Creek drains a watershed of 11,120 acres (4,500 ha) and descends about 8 miles (13 km) from an elevation of 1,050 feet (320 m) in the Olympic Mountains to the ocean. The creek is an important anadromous bull trout habitat but its mouth can be blocked when a spit forms during intense storms, creating a barrier to fish migration. The spit is created by an alongshore current that transports sediment generally from north to south. The sediment comes from the erosion of bluffs north of Kalaloch Creek, which consist of rocks that are part of the Hoh Formation, known as turbidites—essentially sandstones and conglomerates. In recent centuries, waves have eroded the cliffs, winnowing the fine materials from the coarse gravels. This process has reshaped and redistributed the sediment along the beach, so that the upper part of the Kalaloch beach is now mostly coarser gravel, while the lower part is finer sand.

The wide sandy beaches of Washington historically served as traffic corridors for the southwestern Coast Salish people living between the Hoh River and Willapa Bay. In 1774, Juan Pérez, who commanded the frigate Santiago, became the first European to describe the coast of Washington. The following year, Don Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, on the Sonora, explored the coast along with Bruno Heceta and Juan Pérez on the Santiago. Bodega sent seven men ashore in a small boat to find wood and water, but they were killed by a group of Quinault – reputedly for the iron on the boat. Heceta subsequently claimed the land for Spain. In 1846, the Oregon Treaty settled the land claims of the United States and Britain to the Oregon Country. In 1889, Washington gained statehood. In the early 1890s, a man named Brown, accompanied by his sons, reportedly found gold in the beach sands at the mouth of ‘Klalops Creek’. Later that year, Tom Lawder built a cabin and operated a cannery or fish saltery at the mouth of Kalaloch Creek. In the mid- to late 1920s, logging on the Olympic Peninsula flourished, and railroads expanded to transport logs to seaports. In 1925, Charles W. Becker acquired about 40 acres (16 ha) at the mouth of Kalaloch Creek, where he built a residence, a lodge and several small wood-frame cabins near the edge of a short bluff overlooking the beach. The first buildings were constructed from milled lumber that had washed up on the shore. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt designated 898,000 acres (363,000 ha) of the Olympic National Forest as Olympic National Park, preserving some of the primeval forests from logging. In 1940, he authorized the acquisition of a strip of land, about 1 mile (1.6 km) wide along 50 miles (80 km) of the coast, to be added to the park, though this process was not completed until 1953. During the second world war, Becker’s property was occupied by the US Coast Guard for coastal defense patrols. In 1978, the National Park Service purchased the Becker property and renamed it Kalaloch Lodge, which remains the only coastal resort in the park today.

Rocky stretches of coastline typically provide a favorable habitat for diverse seaweed flora; however, areas with long, wide, gently sloping beaches of fine sand and pounding surf are devoid of seaweed. Instead, a different type of algal growth appears: surf diatoms, which are especially abundant on the beaches of Oregon and Washington. At times, these diatoms become so dense that breaking waves turn brown, foam several feet thick forms, and thick deposits of diatoms remain on the beach when the tide recedes. Beaches with the greatest abundance of surf diatoms are generally the most productive Pacific razor clam habitats. Razor clams thrive on the abundant, nearly continuous algal food supply. In turn, they recycle nutrients, particularly nitrogen in the form of ammonium, which comes from the clams’ metabolic processes in the surf environment. Pacific razor clams are prized as a shellfish, collected both commercially and recreationally. Like other shellfish, razor clams can accumulate dangerous levels of marine toxins. Domoic acid is produced by a pennate diatom called Pseudo-nitzschia, which blooms in coastal waters and is consumed by filter feeders, including razor clams, barnacles, and mussels, as well as Dungeness crab and plankton-eating fish. In 1991, contamination by this toxin was first documented on the Washington coast, and since then some of the highest levels have been recorded at Kalaloch. In 1984, more than 95 percent of razor clams along the central Washington coast died. This mass mortality led to the discovery of another bacterial pathogen known as NIX (nuclear inclusion X). Harmless to humans, it targets razor clam gill tissue, slowly choking its host and eventually causing massive ruptures in the gills. It is not known whether NIX has always affected razor clam populations, but in 2015 nearly 100 percent of Kalaloch Beach razor clams were infected. Immediately after the 1984 die-off, NIX was absent from clam populations in Oregon and British Columbia, but still persists in high densities at Kalaloch. Read more here and here. Explore more of Kalaloch and Olympic National Park here: