Forestry matters — Part 6

Published 1:30 am Thursday, August 13, 2026

Compared to the Native Americans gentle treatment of the landscape, our behavior was extreme at both ends of the spectrum. Where we had access we totally annihilated the forest; where we didn’t have access we did nothing. Both options destroyed the delicate balance created by the Native Americans.

An interesting local tidbit before we continue: With the timber gone and Snohomish County wanting to continue to develop the area the tax on the land value was increased and most companies sold their logged over land. The Puget Mill Company decided to market their land for “gentleman farmers”, advertised throughout the western two-thirds of the U.S., built a demonstration farm near the current location of Alderwood Mall, and built a hotel for prospective buyers. Like a modern-day timeshare, if you came out and listened to their pitch they put you up for free in their hotel. If you purchased a lot, 10% down and 7% interest, they would clear one acre for you. The remaining acreage with 15 feet of logging debris was yours to clean up. Apparently it worked. The Puget Mill Company sold hundreds of parcels with many of the buyers taking up raising chickens. In fact, in 1926 the Alderwood area was second only to Petaluma, California, for egg production in the U.S. (For more see: marthalakehistorysaz.com)

Now the good news is that despite the brutal treatment of the lands of our area, we do happen to live in one of the most resilient environments on earth. By 1920, the land between Seattle and Arlington and east to the foothills of the Cascades was pretty much devoid of forest. Those areas are now heavily timbered, some to the point that we should be concerned about urban fire issues. In much of Snohomish County we know that the logging here started about 1900, so the oldest trees you see, some being more than 4 feet in diameter, are at most 126 years old. Teenagers in tree-years. In the areas we hadn’t logged the widely-spaced forest followed the path of normal plant successions, with shade tolerant trees and shrubs filling in the understory, displacing the grassy areas that supported deer and elk.

A friend of mine, a retired consultant forester was involved in a project sponsored by Oregon State University in the 1990s to inventory and analyze hundreds of old growth stands in Oregon, Washington and California (including dozens of spotted owl nesting stands). These were untouched stands, never logged, and the number of old (250- to 600-year-old) trees was generally 5 or less per acre. However, the total densities were 200 to 1000 stems per acre. These stands had very few large, old trees and a dense understory of younger and smaller, trees. It was only later that he had an epiphany and realized the cause for this stand structure. It was quite simple: the burning practices of the Native Americans over millennia had created true old growth stands which were very open, with browse available for game, and were ideal conditions for growing healthy, insect and disease-free trees. The younger cohort sprouted with the cessation of the Indian’s periodic burning, in time becoming the overstocked jungle we see today. What we call now old growth forests are really a recent anomaly.

In 1979, anthropologist Jay Miller “went into the Methow Valley in north-central Washington with a van load of Methow Indian elders, some of whom had not been there for fifty years. When we had gone through about half of the valley, a woman started to cry. I thought it was because she was homesick, but after a time, she sobbed, “when my people lived here, we took good care of all this land. We burned it over every fall to make it like a park. Now it is a jungle. Every Methow I talked to after that confirmed the regular program of burning”. (Indians, Fire and the Land of the Pacific Northwest, Edited by Robert T. Boyd, New edition, 2021.Pg.1)

The Indigenous Peoples did an excellent job for thousands of years. Our culture arrived in force about 175 years and proceeded to make a gigantic mess of the whole situation.

Next, The Modest Management Era.

See theforestmatters.com for source document and additional information.

Don Healy lives in Lynnwood. He graduated with a B.S. Degree in Forest Management from Oregon State University in 1968, spent 10 years in the field and has followed forestry matters avidly during retirement.