Interactive Map of the Eel River Watershed

The Eel River is a major river system of the north coast of California. Approximately 200 miles long, it drains a rugged area in the California Coast Ranges between the Sacramento Valley and the ocean. For most of its course, the river flows northwest, parallel to the coast. The river has both State (1972) and Federal (1981) Wild and Scenic River status. There are 97 miles classified as Wild and 28 miles classified as Scenic along the river's course. The Eel River's watershed of 3,971 square miles is the third largest entirely in California. The river and its tributaries total 3,448 river miles, flowing through Lake, Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity counties.

View the previous version of our watershed map.

The interactive map above may take a minute to fully load. Once it's in, you'll see the Eel River watershed highlighted in brown with several key points marked. Click on each watershed section to see its boundaries highlighted. You'll be able to zoom in and out, scroll about, and to view more detail about each labeled point. There are little arrows on the popup box that will let you see all the map information near this point. At this zoom level, you'll see the major watershed zones - Upper, Middle, South, etc. If you click to the larger map and zoom in, or use the "zoom to" in the popup boxes, you'll be able to see the watershed boundaries for indivdual streams and creeks. Major peaks of the watershed are marked with their elevation, and USGS stream gauge locations are also marked.

More documents & data about the Eel River and Russian River systems.

We've created a new interactive graph of Van Arsdale Fish Counts showing all historical data from VAFS starting in 1933. You can also download the raw data in CSV form, if you wish. The graph makes it easy to compare the counts of the different species and to see how counts have changed over the years.

Return to pottervalleywater.org or view a Photo Survey of the Eel River.