Deschutes River (Stream)

The Deschutes is a fifty-mile river in Washington, and it starts up in Lewis County [1]. It finishes at Budd Inlet, where it gives itself to Puget Sound [1]. The headwaters sit in the Bald Hills, and the mouth is at Olympia, down in Thurston County [1]. Fur traders with the Hudson's Bay Company gave it the name, calling it Rivière des Chutes, the River of the Falls, which was their rendering of what the First Nations people already called that spot [1]. Tumwater, founded in the same place, took its name from the Chinook Jargon word for waterfall [1]. Spurgeon Creek, Thurston Creek and Lake Lawrence run into it [1]. Along the way there are parks, Pioneer Park and Tumwater Falls Park among them, and the Chehalis Western Trail runs beside the water for a stretch of two miles, so people on the trail can reach the river directly [1]. In 2025 the river drew more than $775,000 for salmon habitat work [1].