FORKS — A portion of a ranch in the Bogachiel Rain Forest south of Forks is the first property in West Jefferson County to be added to the North Olympic Peninsula’s group of protected lands.
The land includes a portion of the historic Iron Man Trail.
The legal agreement between landowner Chiggers Stokes and the North Olympic Land Trust, called a conservation easement, protects 18.5 acres of his Flying S Ranch, where coho salmon use a tributary of the Bogachiel River, Roosevelt elk graze and bears consume windfall apples.
“Incredible” is how Michele d’Hemecourt, land trust conservation director, described the recently protected property.
“Chiggers is very conservation-minded and has loved that land since he bought it. And the land has great value to the community.”
Stokes’ property is at the end of the Dowans Creek Road, which turns off U.S. Highway 101 about seven miles south of Forks, and is less than two miles from the Olympic National Park boundary.
“I am fond of pointing out that I have no human neighbors out my east window for 50 miles,” he said in an e-mail.
“Out my west window there are perhaps a dozen permanent residences between myself and Hawaii.”
The property was the first in Jefferson County to be added to the land trust’s projects, d’Hemecourt said.
“Jefferson Land Trust does outstanding work, but [North Olympic Land Trust] is located closer to the property, so that organization has agreed it makes more sense for us to provide the ongoing stewardship and monitoring a conservation easement requires than for representatives of that organization to travel so far,” she said.
Historic trail
A portion of the Pacific Trail, also known as the Iron Man Trail, crosses the property and still is visible under the vegetation.
“It was located at the intersection of a trail going upstream along the Bogachiel River, accessing the homestead of the first white settler to this area, Chris Morgenroth, and the Iron Man Trail,” Stokes said.
Stokes said the Iron Man Trail got its name from pioneer John Huelsdonk, who built it and earned his Iron Man of the Hoh name after he walked across the property carrying a wood stove on his back.
“Chris Morgenroth was said to have asked Huelsdonk if it was awkward hauling a wood stove on one’s back in the wilderness,” Stokes said.
“The Iron Man supposedly replied it was the sack of flour shifting around inside the oven that made it difficult to carry.”
Stokes said that the trail connected the property to the upper Hoh River and to Forks.
“This leg of the trail connected a tiny settlement on the upper Hoh called Spruce with the frontier town of Forks,” he said.
“It’s still possible to travel from this property to Sol Duc or the Hoh River, even without mountaineering skills,” Stokes added.
“The old trails provide a historic thread to a greater tapestry of the area’s heritage.”
Former ranger
Stokes worked for the National Park Service as a resource educator at the Chesapeake and Ohio National Historic Park and worked as a ranger in Olympic National Park from 1977 until he retired in 2000.
Stokes has lived on the land since 1978, where he operates what he calls a “bed and almost breakfast,” writes a newspaper column for the weekly Forks Forum and has completed two published novels: Between Forks and Alpha Centauri and Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-Two.
Stokes has built three homes on the property and uses hydroelectric power from Hemp Hill Creek, a tributary of the Bogachiel River.
The creek also has been enhanced for young salmon, in a collaborative project with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Quileute tribe and state Department of Ecology.
“Young salmon can find protected backwaters in the rearing ponds and channels we built as part of the microhydroelectric system,” Stokes said.
He said he’s counted more than 20 trees that are more than 3 feet in diameter, using the diameter-at-breast-height measurement and, 100 that are more than 2 feet.
“The larger trees are well over 150 feet tall and, though the property was logged in the late 1940s, it has a multilayered canopy and understory which look very much like old growth,” he said.
“The northern spotted owl has been seen on the property, but more recently, the barred owl seems to be taking up residence,” he said.
The conservation easement will allow conservation of natural resources and wetlands. It permits maintenance of the three homes on the property, as well as two barns and other outbuildings, along with the hydroelectric system.
Completion of the Stokes agreement brings the total acreage the land trust is protecting to more than 2,077.
The North Olympic Land Trust office is at 104 N. Laurel St., Suite 104, Port Angeles.
For more information about it, see www.nolt.org or phone the office, 360-417-1815.
Stokes maintains a website www.chiggersstokes.com.
