Klamath Salmon Festival

At noon on festival Saturday the salmon lunch opens in front of the Yurok Tribal Headquarters at 190 Klamath Blvd. in Klamath. For $15 a plate holds a piece of salmon cooked over an open fire, chili beans, fresh fruit, a roll and a drink. Yurok elders eat free while the fish lasts. Maya Mace, a festival co-organizer, put it plainly before the 2026 festival: “There is nothing better than a piece of Klamath salmon cooked on a redwood stick over an open fire.” A Tribe photograph from that summer shows Yurok youth Josh McQuillen readying salmon for the fire.

The festival belongs to the Yurok Tribe. It is held on a Saturday each August from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and it is free and open to all. The Tribe has more than 6,000 members and calls itself the largest tribe in California. In its own words, “The Yurok people have always lived along NorCal’s Klamath River & the Pacific Ocean.” The 2026 festival was the 62nd. The Times-Standard wrote that year that the festival has always been built around the river: its health, its history, and its part in feeding families along the Klamath.

The run, the parade, the vendors

The day opens with the Ney-puy Fun Run/5K. The name is spelled several ways in the Tribe’s own notices, including Ney-Puy and Ney-puey. The parade follows the run. In 2025 the Cal Poly Humboldt marching band played in it, and one float carried a traditional canoe whose riders held salmon-shaped signs. By midmorning, the Times-Standard reported, the grounds fill with families, elders and visitors from across the region. In 2023 the Tribe put typical attendance at about 3,500.

Vendors line the grounds. The Tribe’s 2026 release counted more than 170 selling gift items, and Mace, quoted in the Times-Standard, counted 180. For visitors who miss the salmon there are about 20 lunch vendors, among them an Indian taco booth and several food trucks. In 2025 the Potawot Community Food Garden set out fresh produce at its booth.

The music changes from year to year. Blue Rhythm Revue played in 2026. In 2025 the headliner was Blue Mountain Tribe, an all-Native blues quartet whose music video for “Sacred Flowers” had been selected for more than a dozen film festivals. In 2023 it was Object Heavy, which the Tribe described as vintage soul with modern funk and gospel influences. Basket-weaving demonstrations appeared on the 2023 and 2025 programs. In 2025 the Yurok Fisheries Department screened a segment of Shane Anderson’s documentary “Undamming Klamath,” Lucy Raven’s “Murderers Bar,” and an Our Changing Planet episode titled “River Restoration.” Anderson and Raven came to the screenings.

Most visitors arrive by shuttle from the lots off Highway 101 at the Terwer Valley exit (Exit 769) on Klamath Mill Road, following the salmon signs. Elder and disabled parking is in the Redwood Hotel Casino lot. Dogs stay home, though service animals are permitted.

Stick Game, cards and horseshoes

The Stick Game tournament draws a crowd. Visit Del Norte County describes it as a game played by all the local tribes: full contact, resembling lacrosse, with a wrestling element. A 2025 photograph shows two men locked in it. The Indian Card Game tournament starts at 10 a.m.

The Archie Thompson Memorial Softball Tournament begins at 8 a.m. and runs both days of the weekend. The other tournaments are held Saturday only. For 2026, new horseshoe pits were built beside the Ada Waukell Charles Community Center. The disc golf course lies across the river, near Redwood RV Park off Alder Camp Road on the north bank. Basketball tips off at 11 a.m., and arm wrestling starts at noon. The arm wrestling tournament was a hit in 2024, so in 2025 the Tribe expanded it to men’s, women’s, masters and youth divisions. Other years brought other contests: the 2023 program listed axe throwing, a petting zoo and Rez Chopped.

Store-bought fish

The salmon on the fire has not been a given. In 2017 the Klamath chinook run was so thin that the Tribe served store-bought fish at its festival. Thomas O’Rourke, then Yurok Tribal Chairman, wrote on Facebook at the time: “The Klamath salmon is as much a part of our traditional culture as our prayers and our drums. That is what is at stake here, the continuation of our very existence as Yurok people.”

The San Francisco Chronicle traced the decline to the dams. Fish populations crashed after the first Klamath dam went up in 1918 and fell further with each new one, the last finished in 1965. The Tribe’s own list of causes adds habitat loss, water diversions, disease, blocked tributaries, poor water quality, and damage left by logging and mining. Since 2015 the Tribe has closed its commercial fishery every year but one. In many years its subsistence quota came to less than one fish per member. The nearest grocery store is one to three hours from the reservation’s population centers.

A parade under smoky skies

On July 26, 2023, the Tribe announced there would be no salmon at the 59th festival. Its notice said the forecast run was one of the lowest on record; the Northcoast Environmental Center later called it the lowest. That year the Tribe harvested no salmon at all. “This decision reflects our sacred responsibility to take care of the Klamath River’s fish stocks,” said Chairman Joseph L. James. “The festival is still happening.”

It went on as planned on August 19, 2023, under the theme “Celebrating Dam Removal and the Healing of the Klamath River.” Under smoky skies, members of the Yurok Tribal Court, the Yurok Wellness coalition and Playhouse Arts, helped by the Northcoast Environmental Center, rode a float down the parade route. Along the way they “removed” each of the four Klamath River dams again and again. The environmental center’s caption called the day the Klamath “No-Salmon” Festival. Crews were already taking the dams apart.

Four dams, four years

The last of the four dams came out in August 2024. By the Tribe’s account, a month later thousands of salmon were moving into the newly open river. The removal reopened about 400 miles of habitat above the old dam sites.

The run had not yet recovered by the next summer. The 2025 forecast was well below average, and the 61st festival served no salmon, though its theme was “Celebrating the Spectacular Start of the Klamath River’s Renewal!” Chairman James said, “It fills my heart to see the Klamath healing with each passing day.”

In 2026 the recreational and commercial salmon fisheries reopened on a limited basis, ending a closure the Tribe called unprecedented. The Pacific Fishery Management Council kept the Tribe’s own quota tight. The Tribe’s release said salmon was back “after four long years,” while the Lost Coast Outpost headline counted three years without it. “We are especially excited about this year’s event because the return of salmon and the Klamath River’s continued recovery give us much to celebrate,” Mace said. The Tribe harvested a moderate number of fish for the lunch and warned that plates might run out early. Visit Del Norte County lists the next festival for August 21, 2027.