It’s not uncommon to walk through downtown Bellingham and be saturated with different street murals. Whether it’s bird alley on Railroad Avenue, the recent addition of the colorful salmon and orca swimming on a mural lining North Forest Street — or the wall attached to the Schweinhaus Biergarten that’s noticeable once you drunkenly stumble out onto the sidewalk.
On Prospect Street near Maritime Heritage Park is the large mural of a salmon, drawn on the south side of the Sylvia Art Center. Within the salmon are various artifacts connecting the mural to Bellingham’s natural history: the Salish peoples, Whatcom Creek and the early Puget Sound fishing industry.
Created by the East Los Streetscapers in 1990, it was part of the city’s Whatcom Creek Salmon Art Trail, intended to remind people of the area’s history before the creek was channeled and polluted to make way for neighborhood development.
While you can’t see it in the downtown area today, salmon used to freely move and jump through Whatcom Creek. (And they still do in the fall, at least in the lower reaches, on their way to the fish hatchery operated by Bellingham Technical College.)
