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This is the second time The Mountaineers Books and The Seattle Times have partnered to tell a story of the Olympic Mountains: The Seattle Press, predecessor to the Times, sponsored the historic Press Expedition into the Olympics in thewinter of 1889 90, an account later published by Mountaineers Books in Across the Olympic Mountains.More recently, in the fall of 2011, the Times was on hand when a Montana contractor removed the first pieces from two concrete dams on the Elwha River which cuts through the Olympic range. It was the beginning of the largest dam removal project ever undertaken in North America-one dam was 200 feet tall-and the start of an unprecedented attempt to restore an entire ecosystem. More than 70 miles of the Elwha and its tributaries course from the mountain headwatersto clamming beaches on the Strait of Juan de Fuca.