When was forks washington founded

Your Name. Your Location. Check box to agree to these submission guidelines. I am at least 16 years of age. I understand and accept the privacy policy. I understand that you will display my submission on your website. You can preview and edit on the next page. Click the pic and see the beautiful photography of our featured Photographic Artist, Roger Mosley.

I have a few books about hikes in the area but your book is unique. I love how you include maps, online resources, restaurants, places to stay, and on and on. Our neighbors just moved to Washington and have been trying to explore the local area. I recommended this book to them. They bought it on the spot! I have lived here most of my life; with your book, I feel like I'm discovering where we live through a new lens.

It's simply wonderful " Cristy, WA. Click the pic above for much more info. Or, purchase your autographed paperback copy below! All rights reserved. My Port Angeles. Contact Us. What is a nice little town like Forks doing in the middle of a rain forest?

Glad you asked; here are the why's and the wherefore's. Forks WA History Starts With the Native Quileute Tribe Before the establishment of a town in the middle of a rain forest, the Quileute Indian tribe lived throughout a large segment of the middle-west Olympic Peninsula, from the region south of Ozette Lake, to land north of the Quinault River, including the area that Forks would one day occupy.

Herd of Roosevelt elk grazing at dusk near Forks, WA. Massive old-growth tree still standing and growing in the Washington rain forest. Tell Us Your Story! The city was incorporated on August 28, directly following the election of the town members and officials. It is considered a small city with the population being reported as 3, in the estimate from the office of financial management. Contrary to popular belief, Forks is not well known for the fishing industry.

In the past Forks was well known for its large timber industry, but in recent years the industry has declined. Currently the largest economic revenue in the town comes from the nearby Clallam Bay Corrections Center and the Olympic Corrections Center. Prior to the release of the Twilight Saga books and movies most of Forks tourist income came from sport fishers that came to the area to fish for salmon and rainbow trout in the surrounding rivers and visitors to the Olympic National Park.

Since the release of the Twilight Saga books and movies tourism in the city have more than tripled increasing the revenue for the city. Mount Olympus rears 6, feet above the town, adding to the atmospheric wilderness where the famous story unfolds. Within the 70 miles of park, which stretches from the coast to the glacier-topped peaks of the Olympic Mountains, is Hoh Rain Forest. The forest is carpeted with green with moss and Oregon oxalis, which paints a beautiful yet eerie setting synonymous with the hunting scenes in the books.

The first U. On January 29, , mile-per hour winds raged through the West End and flattened nearly 20 percent of the forest surrounding Forks. Residents recalled the air "full of flying limbs," "a hurricane roaring overhead" Smith, 64 , and the road north from Forks to Lake Crescent a tangle of downed trees -- some in the first mile.

Then on January 10, , fire burned most of the west side of main street, including the Forks Hotel, the Odd Fellows building, two pool halls one the genesis of the fire , and the general store. World War II brought fortifications along the ocean and the strait to guard against a possible landing by Japan.

West Enders were warned not to expect evacuation or rescue in the event of an attack -- the sole highway would be reserved for military transport. In the Great Forks Fire almost claimed the town.

It began the morning of September 21 east of Forks and raced almost 18 miles toward the town in eight hours. Residents bulldozed and then worked the fire lines, while others helped with evacuation as smoke choked the town and fire curled around it on three sides. Seventy-one-year-old Oliver Ford, son of original settlers Luther and Esther, remained on his front porch armed only with a garden hose as "the flames exploded houses like matches" Amundson, Only a shift in wind bringing cool, moist ocean air slowed the blaze enough for it to be controlled.

In the end, 32 buildings in Forks burned, along with 33, acres of forest. The timber company Bloedel-Donovan bought thousands of acres in the Forks area in , all of it either next to or made accessible by the railroad. Bloedel-Donovan ended by not using the existing tracks -- though other logging companies later would -- instead building its own hundred miles of rail network and beginning to log in , hauling its logs to Sekiu on the strait and towing them in huge rafts to Bellingham for milling.

The company ran this operation for two decades, peaking at million board feet in both and The completion of the Olympic Loop Highway in was another boost, granting access to vast tracts of virtually untouched Douglas fir and Sitka spruce south of Forks. Timber dominated the town's economy through the s. Large companies like ITT Rayonier which bought lands from Bloedel-Donovan and another major timber company in the s employed hundreds of woods workers -- Rayonier was still the largest private landowner in the Forks area in , its trees second- and third-growth.

Forks residents also worked as independent contract, or "gypo," loggers, especially after World War II when railroad logging camps became less prevalent. Many smaller, family-owned operations were engaged in secondary wood processing, such as making cedar shingles for roofing and siding. One of the larger so-called shake and shingle mills was the Forks Shingle Mill near the Hoh River, which operated from through the mids, when it burnt down. The Rosmond Brothers Sawmill, only one of the mills in town, opened in the s and was a major employer through two ownership changes until the s.

Disasters proved an unlikely road to Forks's boom years in the s, when the town earned its reputation as "Logging Capital of the World. Then the Columbus Day Storm of flattened 15 billion board feet of Northwest timber. Though this storm didn't hit Forks directly, it created such a huge supply of downed timber for salvage that overseas markets were developed to absorb the surplus, and Forks cashed in on the generated demand -- U.

Bill Brager, whose father and uncle were the first gypo loggers for ITT Rayonier in the s, remembers the s as a time when he could "make a couple calls and have a good job" in the woods Brager interview. Prospects revived in the mids as timber prices jumped, but then came fierce and bitter controversy surrounding habitat protection for the northern spotted owl, which was eventually listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in The era of cutting mammoth trees, which had fueled Forks growth, was also ending because little old growth remained.

In one environmental group estimated low-elevation old growth in Olympic National Forest at 3 percent, and ITT Rayonier had none left on its lands around Forks by the late s. As far back as , timber depletion had been predicted between and , given the rate of harvest, and in the state's Department of Natural Resources warned that the cut on its lands would decrease as old growth disappeared.

Forks was at the center of this complicated stew as forest-related jobs fell by almost 25 percent after Three mills in Forks closed in December , and the number of logging companies in western Clallam and Jefferson counties slid from about 70 in to 14 in People involved only in logging left town and population dipped.

The state estimated that Forks experienced as high as 19 percent unemployment in , and U.