On Oregon’s beautiful North Coast rivers, the Salmon SuperHwy is working hard to reconnect over 180 miles of high-priority, historic salmon, steelhead, lamprey and cutthroat trout habitat in the Tillamook, Nestucca and Sand Lake watersheds.
As of January 2026, the partnership has already accomplished 75 percent of their goal. Over the course of the last decade, the partnership has restored access to 137 miles of spawning and rearing habitat and sources of cold water for native fish.
Struggling populations of fish are benefitting from their work and so are local communities and anglers.
When failing or undersized culverts get replaced with a new bridge or bigger culverts, communities benefit from flood-resilient infrastructure on key roads. When the team replaces an old tide gate, farmers and towns are better able to manage flooding, and fish are no longer prevented from reaching the habitat they need to thrive.
This work provides good jobs for regional construction crews and engineering firms, and contributes to subsequent economic benefits for the agricultural, fishing, timber and tourism industries that rely on dependable transportation corridors.
Partnerships drive success
The Salmon SuperHwy’s keys to success are strong partnerships. The work depends on the support of federal and state agencies, county transportation departments, local watershed councils, regional businesses and dedicated nonprofit organizations. Trout Unlimited has three staff members leading project design and implementation efforts.
But, in the end, all this coordination, fundraising and design work ultimately depends on skilled contractors who can take on complicated projects, often in challenging coastal environments, to make the transformative work on the ground possible.
In 2025, one of those companies delivering benefits to fish and communities was Legacy Contracting Inc., a family-owned regional business who helped the Salmon SuperHwy team make their Flower Pot Creek fish passage project a success.
Legacy Contracting Inc.
Jeff Howell and Todd Ross founded Legacy Contracting Inc. in 2009. The company is based in Stayton, Oregon and specializes in heavy civil projects. They mostly work in Oregon and Washington but have also completed projects in Idaho and California. The company has ten employees based in their Stayton office and hires approximately 60 additional workers each year on their projects. Austin Howell, the son of founder Jeff Howell, led the work at Flower Pot Creek.
Austin grew up working for the company on weekends and during the summer. He studied forestry in college before coming home to work for Legacy. He is an angler and a dedicated hunter in his free time and laughs describing how he and the crew couldn’t help but notice all the boats heading out each day to fish for Coho salmon while they were working at Flower Pot Creek, right on the coast.
Growing up in Oregon made him proud to be working on a project restoring and reconnecting salmon habitat.
Deep experience in marine environments
The project at Flower Pot Creek saw challenges requiring specialized skills and experience working in estuary environments. The project involved replacing a failing culvert blocking fish passage and construction of a two-lane bridge on a key coastal road along Tillamook Bay.
Jacob Jesionek, a TU project manager working for the Salmon SuperHwy, explains that they needed to find a contractor who had extensive, demonstrated experience working in tidal environments. Legacy’s track record of bridge work, marina construction, piledriving and dredging were a perfect fit.
Working in a tidal environment presents unique challenges. The Legacy crew needed to build a large, temporary berm to keep ocean water out of the space where they were working and often dealt with tides that could shift up to 8 feet at a time.
Adjusting to tidal schedules is a part of a project like this, too. “Sometimes that means getting started at 3:00am, and other times it means working until midnight,” Austin explains.
Building a bridge in a coastal environment is no simple task. The Legacy crew had to piledrive ten 16-inch diameter bridge posts down into the bedrock to support the new structure. That meant driving posts 120 feet down into the ground in some cases.
Remarkably, aside from a few small scheduling hiccups, the Legacy crew finished the project on time, and the road only needed to be closed a little over a month.
“In the end, this infrastructure is a big improvement,” says Austin. “This new bridge will be here for our lifetime, so it needs to be done right.”
Reconnected habitat
The project at Flower Pot Creek reconnected 1.4 miles of fish habitat, improved tidal exchange to 14 acres of estuary and provided a new bridge for the local community. It was supported by funding from NOAA Fisheries, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest Service, along with local support from Tillamook County Public Works.
“Trout Unlimited depends on skilled contractors like Legacy who have experience completing restoration work that benefits both fish and wildlife as well as local infrastructure,” explains TU’s Jacob Jesionek. “The Salmon SuperHwy team was happy with the constant communication from the Legacy crew throughout the project and their dedication to being on-site and getting the project completed in a timely manner. We look forward to working together on other important habitat restoration projects with them in the future.”
Austin Howell sums up the project by describing the important benefits he witnessed firsthand while working on the site.
“The difference between the new bridge and the old culvert is like night and day,” he said. “When we installed the temporary tide gate to keep water out of the work site, you could see fish trying to get through.
Once we opened it back up, it only took a little bit of time before we saw fish, crabs and other animals using the connected habitat. It was really neat.”
Thanks to Legacy Contracting, the Salmon SuperHwy has even more connected habitats to the benefit of fish and communities and anglers.