Ecology & History

A GORP Content Partner Adapted from Recreational Guide to Washington National Forests by Wendy Walker

Ash layers underlay almost everything growing in the forest. The soil is made up of layers of ash from many different eruptions over hundreds of thousands of years. This volcanic soil helps produce some of the fastest growing trees in the world.

The most dramatic geologic story of recent times is the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, which blew more than 1, 300 feet off the top of the volcano. A wave of ash, gas, and steam three times hotter than boiling water roared north at speeds faster than a jet plane can go. The ash scorched or blew down 200 square miles of trees. Fifty-seven people and countless animals lost their lives during the eruption.

The other major volcano within the national forest, Mount Adams, rises 12,276 feet to earn the title of the second highest peak in Washington. Mount Adams is really a cluster of volcanic cones ranging in age from 450,000 to 12,000 years old.

Within the Mount St. Helens National Monument, natural processes are at work recolonizing the blast zone with animals and plants. Hummingbirds hover near geologists working in the steaming crater of the volcano. Pacific silver fir and mountain hemlock, buried in the snow during the eruption, survived and now seed surrounding areas. Elk graze in the weedy plants springing up among dead trees. Ten years after the 1980 eruption, almost every species that lived near Mount St. Helens before the blast had returned.

In the blast zone outside the national monument, humans are experimenting with helping nature heal its volcanic wounds. The trees downed by the blast have been harvested, producing enough wood for 150,000 houses. The land has been replanted with Douglas-fir that are thriving in the water-retaining ash. A single year's growth on some trees measures up to five feet.

Willow and cottonwood were planted along stream banks to reduce erosion, cool the water for fish, and provide cover for deer, elk, and smaller mammals. Fisheries biologists placed log sills and brush dams in creeks to create pools where sediment settles out and fish can find still-water havens. Twenty-inch trout now swim in streams that once flowed with boiling mud.

Beaver returning to the blast zone have traveled all the way up to the headwaters of streams and are again building their dams. At Meta Lake, beaver dams have raised the level of the lake so that it floods the viewing deck and interpretive signs each spring.

After each eruption, the Indians returned to a re-shaped landscape. Some forests were destroyed, but new berry fields took their place. Some rivers were emptied of fish, but deer thrived in new open areas. As plants and animals adapted to volcanic changes, the Indians also adapted to continue to reap the bounty of this fiery place.

The history of Indians living in the national forest is well illustrated at Layser Cave in the northern part of the forest near Randle. The cave is reached by a short trail, and interpretive exhibits explain the 7,000 year history of the site.

Indians continue to live near and harvest resources from the national forest. Family groups still meet at the Indian camps in the extensive berry fields near the center of the national forest each summer to harvest berries, continuing the traditions of their ancestors.

In 1824, the British Hudson's Bay Company set up headquarters at Fort Vancouver, southwest of the national forest. The company coordinated fur trapping in most of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia. Fur trappers were the first non-Indians to explore what is now the national forest. Homesteaders moved into the wide valley bottoms and miners into the mountains in the late 1800s. Mining boomed during the 1890s and then died out. The timber industry geared up in the 1890s with the arrival of railroads and sawmills.

The Pacific Forest Reserve was established in 1893 and included the present national forest lands. The name changed to Mount Rainier Forest Reserve and then to the Columbia National Forest. The forest was chosen in 1949 to bear the name of the first chief of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, because it was such a good example of extensive multiple use of public land. The Gifford Pinchot National Forest was known for many years as a "working forest. "It produced the second largest timber cut of any national forest in the United States.

From 1933 to 1942, The Civilian Conservation Corps built trails, roads, and buildings within the national forest. Some of the best-preserved structures still are being used to house operations at the Wind River Nursery in the southern part of the forest.

Today, the national forest is much more a "recreation forest." Roads built for logging are now mostly used for scenic drives. Campgrounds bulge at the seams. Visitors come from every state in the Union and many other countries to see the results of the Mount St. Helens eruptions.

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