Nooksack Delta

The Nooksack River drains a large section of the North Cascades between Mount Baker and Canada and has been carry Cascades dirt into Bellingham Bay for ages. Historically, the Nooksack also drained to Lummi Bay, doing so along the path of what is now the Red River, but that option was foreclosed (a deliberate manipulation) over a hundred years ago. The Nooksack continues to build its delta into the northern part of the Bellingham Bay, with the associated sand flats spreading both east past Marietta (toward Bellingham) and southwest along the Lummi Peninsula. Its delta remains the most natural of all the big river deltas on the eastern shore of the Sound, with multiple, changing distributaries and forested wetlands.