In a mossy stretch of forest on Washington state’s outer coast, streets and sidewalks have appeared in recent weeks, representing the future of the Quinault Indian Nation. The coastal tribe has spent a decade trying to move its villages out of reach of a rising Pacific Ocean and its tsunamis.

It’s an approach many communities might need to embrace as Earth’s climate keeps warming and seas keep rising.

Where the Quinault River empties into the Pacific, a sea wall of massive boulders protects the Quinault Reservation village of Taholah from pounding waves, but it’s not always up to the task.

“It is inevitable that my street will be in the ocean at some point,” Lia Frenchman said. The Quinault tribal member and historic preservation officer lives with her partner and two kids in a modular home perched on cinder blocks in the shadow of the sea wall.

“At high tide in winter, the waves will come over, my backyard will fill with water, and you’ll see the water running under my house, out into the street,” Frenchman said. “Like, I’ll have a full current going.”

Each winter, the highest tides of the year — known as king tides — threaten to flood the low-lying village of 800 people, the largest on the Quinault Reservation. Waves deposit hulking driftwood logs on top of the sea wall and, occasionally, into people’s backyards.

“There’s a few new ones today, even,” Frenchman said.

Tidal flooding forced the evacuation of Taholah in 2022, with the tribal government putting up elders at its casino 25 miles down the coast.

Frenchman knew the hazards of living by the sea wall when she bought her home in 2020, but housing is scarce in Taholah. Some four-bedroom homes house up to 20 people.

“We just made the most of this little home that became available and had to also make the choice to move onto this street, which is the most susceptible to flooding,” she said.

When big waves hit the sea wall at high tide, Frenchman’s home shakes.

“It just vibrates, like a little mini earthquake constantly, for a few hours,” she said.

Should a major earthquake hit the Cascadia Subduction Zone just offshore, or other seismic hot spots around the Pacific Rim, most of Taholah could be inundated by a tsunami.

“My kids’ schools, they’re all sea level,” Frenchman said. “They’re all in the flooding zone.”

Oceanographers say king tides in Taholah and elsewhere give a sneak peek of the future as an ever-hotter climate swells the world’s oceans. Global sea levels have risen about 7 inches over the past century due to heat-trapping pollution, with a similar rise forecast in just the next 30 years.

The Quinaults’ approach, sometimes called “managed retreat,” is a response to human-driven climate change that coastal communities are facing from Boston to Bangladesh. Such an approach can cost many millions of dollars, and the emotional toll can be high. People in the U.S. who relocate because of climate change usually move within 20 minutes of their original home, according to recent research.

Coastal property owners often prefer higher sea walls or engineering solutions to try to hold back a rising sea over relocating or abandoning valuable waterfront real estate.

“There are lots of examples of places that no longer exist on the map, so this has happened before,” said oceanographer Ian Miller with Washington Sea Grant at the University of Washington. “There are not too many instances of it happening in this kind of planned, managed, coordinated way.”

Taholah has done more to confront that hotter future than most places in the U.S. and it is gradually becoming one of the first American communities to move inland as sea levels rise.

In December, the Quinault government reached a milestone in its long push to provide safe housing for its people.

“You’re looking at about 9 acres of fresh development, with asphalt and sidewalks and lots of open space to start building some houses,” tribal council member Ryan Hendricks said behind the wheel of his pickup truck. “What I see is, I see a really nice start of relocating a village.”

There are no houses yet, just a figure eight of streets, sidewalks and underground utilities carved out of the tribe’s lichen-draped timberlands. The upland site with lots for 59 homes is about a mile from the lower village and 130 feet above sea level.

“I’m excited to see tribal members cruising around up here in anticipation,” said Hendricks, who used to manage the construction project before he was elected to the tribal council.

While fully relocating the village is expected to take at least another decade, tribal officials hope the first Quinault elders can begin moving into new homes in the next year or two.

“It’s a big project for such a small group of people to take on,” Hendricks said.