Tribal Trust Land Status in Jefferson County: The Hoh Tribe's Ongoing Relocation

Why the Hoh Tribe is relocating: a documented hazard, not a general coastal-risk framing

The Hoh Indian Reservation sits at the mouth of the Hoh River on Jefferson County's remote Pacific coast, established by Executive Order on September 11, 1893, and covering 443 acres with roughly a mile of beachfront extending south toward Ruby Beach. What makes this reservation's situation different from general Pacific Northwest coastal-hazard exposure is the sheer concentration of risk: approximately 90% of the reservation's land area sits within a mapped flood zone, and the entire reservation sits within a tsunami inundation zone. That combination -- documented by federal and tribal planning studies rather than asserted informally -- is what has driven a genuine, decades-long tribal and federal effort to move essential infrastructure and residents to higher ground.

The 2010 Safe Homelands Act and the land assembly that followed

Congress responded to the Hoh Tribe's advocacy -- dating back to at least the 1990s, when the late Chairman Herbert C. Fisher, Jr. first pushed for enrolled members to be moved to higher ground -- with the Hoh Indian Tribe Safe Homelands Act, sponsored by Washington Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. The Act passed the Senate by unanimous consent on September 30, 2010, and transferred approximately 37 acres carved out of Olympic National Park to the Tribe, while also placing an additional 425 acres the Tribe had purchased over the prior several years into federal trust status.

The relocation effort continued well beyond that legislative milestone. The Tribe subsequently purchased roughly 260 acres from private landowners adjacent to the trust land, and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources transferred an additional 160 acres of state land to support the effort. Combined, this multi-source land assembly -- federal park land, purchased private land, and transferred state land, all eventually placed into trust -- represents one of the more substantial and better-documented tribal relocation land programs in the Pacific Northwest.

Hoh Highlands: construction is happening now

The Tribe's relocation site, Hoh Highlands, sits along U.S. Highway 101 approximately 1.75 miles southeast of the existing reservation and covers roughly 80 acres. This isn't a distant or theoretical future project: Phase 1 road infrastructure was completed in 2024, and a 2024-dated request for proposals for design and engineering services covering a first phase of 14 homes -- including road construction, sidewalks, utility installation, and site clearing -- shows active, ongoing development work. The Hoh Tribe, along with the neighboring Quileute Tribe and the Quinault Indian Nation (both also on Washington's outer coast), face similar tsunami and flooding exposure, and federal relocation funding proposals in Congress have periodically covered all three nations together.

For anyone evaluating land near the Hoh Reservation, near Hoh Highlands, or elsewhere on Jefferson County's outer coast, this ongoing project is a useful, concrete illustration of how seriously flood and tsunami exposure is treated in this specific stretch of coastline by the federal government, the state, and the Tribe itself -- worth factoring into any coastal parcel's hazard evaluation even outside the reservation boundary itself.