Archives West Finding Aid

The Ralph E. Wahl Photographs and Papers chronicle several decades of fishing excursions taken by Wahl and his fishing compatriots throughout the Pacific Northwest in the early and mid twentieth century. These excursions are beautifully documented and reflected through the eye of Wahl’s camera.

Ralph Wahl, born in 1906, was the son of Joseph and Anna Wahl. The Wahl family owned and operated J.B. Wahl department store and the Grand Theatre in Bellingham, Washington. When his father died in 1937, Ralph assumed management of the department store and pursued this career until his retirement in 1971. However, his real passion was for fishing and photography, activities that had interested him since his youth. He had, in fact, always considered himself a fisherman/photographer with a business, as opposed to a businessman with hobbies.

Ralph Wahl’s early photographs (1920-35) focus on the town of Bellingham, as well as local rural scenes throughout Whatcom and Skagit counties, including Squalicum and Friday Creeks, the Samish River, and the surrounding foothills. In addition, he documented several hiking, camping and touring excursions in lowland Puget Sound and SW British Columbia. It was also during this period that Wahl discovered his fabled Shangri-La Pool below the estuary of the Skagit River near Lyman, Washington. It was at this site that he developed his great passion for angling after giant Steelhead. The “secret pool” yielded 45 years worth of fishing pleasure and culminated in Wahl’s memoir One Man’s Steelhead Shangri-La (1989).

Wahl traveled throughout the Western United States, British Columbia and Alaska and documented these excursions through photography. He was accompanied by groups of avid fly fishermen including Enos Bradner, Howard Gray, Gordon Frear, and his life-long fishing partner Les Townley. These group trips included the 1952 Alaska excursion which centered around the Arolic River and the Brooks River and Falls, the 1953 Ketchikan, Alaska trip with highlights at Orchard Falls and Orchard River, the beloved September 1955 and 1956 trips to the Kispiox River, British Columbia, as well as numerous journeys to the lakes and rivers of Montana and Eastern Washington. Fish sought after, caught, and typically released were the Steelhead, Sea-run Cutthroat, Salmon, Shee Fish, and Kamloops, among others.

Many of Ralph Wahl’s images were published in magazines such as Field and Stream, Argosy Magazine, The Flyfisher, and the Fourth Corner Fly Fisher’s journal, Random Casts. There is also documentation suggesting that he was published in Sports Illustrated in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In 1971 many of Mr. Wahl’s images were published alongside the writings of his friend Roderick Haig-Brown for the book Come Wade the River. For this achievement he was recognized at the 1972 Governor’s Writers Day by then Governor Daniel Evans.

Ralph Wahl also enjoyed a long association with a number of groups including the Federation of Fly Fishers, the Fly Fisher Foundation (of which he was a Director), the Washington Fly Fishers Club, the Fly Fishers Club of Oregon, the Northwest Outdoor Writers Association and the Outdoor Writers Association of America. He was also a strong supporter of the burgeoning American Museum of Fly Fishing in Vermont and the Fly Fishing Museum in Florence, Oregon.

Ralph Wahl was as devoted to photography as he was to fly fishing and he spent a good deal of time experimenting with a variety of development processes as well as exploring different film and camera types. A portion of this collection also reflects his love of the outdoors and is devoted to landscape shots as well as nature studies. Ralph Wahl died in June 1996 at the age of 90.