Dungeness River Nature Center

Mission

To inspire understanding, respect, and stewardship of our natural and cultural resources.

A former Audubon Center, The Dungeness River Nature Center sits in a beautiful, natural woodland of cottonwoods, big leaf maples, and conifers at the edge of the swift and cold Dungeness River. It's a forest and river sanctuary where people of all ages come to connect with nature.  

Your gift to the River Center today will inspire children and adults to appreciate and steward nature for a lifetime. You make possible a robust annual curriculum of lively and engaging classes, events, lectures, films, and field trips year-round.

Open seven days a week, free to the public, the Center provides outdoor and indoor classroom learning about river ecology, watershed restoration and protection, fish culture, and bird species and animal behaviors. The Center offers adult and children's classes year-round that range from science-based lectures and field trips, to wildflower hikes, and salmon life cycles, and nature photography, drawing, and crafts.

The Center's demonstrated values of environmental understanding and stewardship inspire the River Center to guide people on the path toward a well-informed future. Everything learned here about the Dungeness River can be applied to any watershed in the world.

The Center's new exhibits combine over 200 museum-quality mounted birds and animals of the Olympic Peninsula showcased in their preferred habitat--from the River's origin in the alpine snowfields to its estuary on the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Exhibits also showcase Jamestown S'Klallam Tribal culture. Traditional Salish house posts, carved at the House of Myths, welcome you. Signs are written in both S'Klallam and English. And inside, you'll learn about the Tribe's work in salmon, wetland, river, and tideland restoration. 

Partnered with both the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe and with the National and Olympic Peninsula Audubon Societies, the River Center's logo was designed by Bud Turner, at The House of Myths, the Jamestown Tribe's totem carving center.  

The new facility includes a 150-seat meeting/screening/events room, classrooms, gift shop, a fully-equipped catering kitchen, exhibits room, wildlife viewing room overlooking a demonstration rain garden, and Hurricane Coffee at the River, all connected by a light-filled, two-story atrium. The Center's patio can seat over 250 for lectures and entertainment on warm afternoons and under the stars. 

An outdoor classroom, shaped like a traditional NW Coast cedar hat, opened in 2023 and already has hosted over 30 classes of fifth-grade students, numerous children's Sunday afternoon art workshops and during the summer, an outdoor Sunset speaker series.

A historic railroad bridge, part of the Olympic Discovery Trail  that stretches all the way from Port Townsend to Lake Crescent, crosses the Dungeness River just a few hundred feet from the Center. 

The Olympic Discovery Trail and historic bridge are open free to pedestrians and cyclists year round.

Photo by John Gussman