Rivers are conduits for transporting sediments and organic material through the watershed and to the ocean. The Elwha River recently was involved in the largest dam removal in history within the USA. Studies of the dam removal impacts have never been done as extensively as they have for the Elwha River Restoration project. Now, the river is no longer blocked, and 21 million m3 of sediments have been made available for erosion, and it is not fully known where the sediments are depositing and how they are affecting the ecosystem. In order to quantify where organics are being stored in the river system, sediment samples were collected along the river and shoreline, and grain size and loss on ignition (LOI) analysis performed on them. Most of the samples with more than 2% organic content were at sites in the reservoir and side channels, and organics less than 1% were retained on the beach and riverbank. Therefore, finding organic matter in the river and shoreline systems can inform us how the ecosystem is recovering, and whether overtime organics are fully transported to the ocean, or whether organics will be consumed, transformed, or altered along the way.