Although the 1855 Treaty of Point No Point created the Skokomish Reservation, it was too far from the Lower Elwha Klallam’s traditional fishing and hunting grounds to be practical. In the following decades, the Tribe struggled to obtain land near their traditional resources and was displaced several times. The Tribe finally obtained its own reservation in 1968.
Although the Elwha Klallam Reservation wasn’t federally recognized until January 19, 1968, the first steps towards a reservation were taken in the late 1930s. In 1937, the Tribe acquired 353 acres of trust land with federal funding (Wray 1997). The funding was made available through the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), which was passed in 1934. (After the IRA was passed, there was an effort by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to consolidate the three Klallam tribes into a single tribe and provide them with a reservation; however, this effort met with resistance from the tribes and was abandoned in the late 1930s.) The acquisition included 14 houses, so the tribe selected the 14 families most in need to move onto the new trust land (Cultural Advisory Committee 2003). The Elwha Klallam Tribe became Federally Recognized on January 19, 1968.
Growth of the community was slow since much of the reservation lies within the floodplain of the Elwha River. In 1989, the Army Corps of Engineers built a dike along the river, making the land more useable for development. Expanded housing development began in the early 1990s.
Today, the Lower Elwha Reservation (located near the city of Port Angeles) encompasses about 1,000 acres of land starting at the mouth of the Elwha River and extending upriver. This location, which is within their historic territory, gives the Tribe easier access to their “usual and accustomed” fishing grounds so that they can exercise the tribal fishing rights that were affirmed by the Boldt decision in 1974. However, Tribe members still struggle with restricted access to traditional near-shore resources, such as shellfish (Shaffer 2004).