[puzzlr]

During the past year I've spent several days at the UW special collections library looking through old trail and hiking archives, including summit register collections. These two captioned images stood out enough for me to take a picture to remember, even though they weren't what I was there looking for. This one reinforces that the "good old days" were pretty much like today, and there are always a few that spoil things for the many.

From UW special collections

Our collective thinking about forests has changed a lot over the years, and this photographer's caption illustrates a lot of that.

From UW special collections

These were just things I ran across while browsing, so I'm sorry that I don't have exact dates or the name of the photographer. But definitely early 20th century.

[wolffie]

I wish the sordid Moroans would stay out of the city, too. I could tell them where to go.

[RodF]

Theft of shakes from shelters for kindling has always been a problem. The original USFS Adirondack shelters built in the northeast and Great Lakes states featured horizontal log walls (the "L-1" design). In the northwest, where cedar is available, post-and-beam walls with cedar shakes came into use in the 1920s ("L-3" design), and a larger version became standard by the late 1920s ("L-4" design). Figures: USFS Region 6 Building Plans Handbook, 1934.

L-1, L-2 & L-3 shelter plans

L-4 shelter plan

Theft of shakes from the walls of L-3 and L-4 shelters required continuous replacement, and finally forced the NPS in the 1950s to replace the shake walls in some L-3 and L-4 shelters with board-and-batten or split log siding, and revert to the lower-maintenance L-1 and L-2 log designs for new shelters. Even today, a major annual maintenance task for Friends of Olympic Trail Shelters (FOOTS) is replacement of shakes, torn off for kindling. Note added: here is NPS guidance on shelters from 1938. Some of these structures now historic and in areas later designated Wilderness, so are one of the historic values which should be protected by the Wilderness Act.

[Lono]

[RodF]

Native materials blend into the landscape much better, but in the early 1950s NPS did try installing corrugated aluminum sheet roofs on trail shelters to reduce maintenance. See Olympic NP Backcountry Historic Structures Report. Unfortunately, supported only by purlins, these roofs flexed enough under heavy winter snows that they leaked badly, and had to be replaced with cedar shakes. Bear Camp Shelter on the Dosewallips River is a rare shelter, originally built with very low roof pitch (2.3/12) specifically for a metal roof. This pitch is too shallow for shakes to work. So when rehabilitating it last year, NPS had to decide between either raising the roof, or preserving the original design, and chose the latter. This required installing a tongue-and-groove decking to provide stable support for the new metal roof. Note added: here's photos showing the new roof deck and roof.

Bear Camp Shelter (NPS photo)

Bear Camp Shelter (NPS photo)

Credit for the restoration goes to NPS backcountry carpenter Jason Benson, Jeremiah Brown, Dave Myers, Pam Dopp and historical architect Ellen Gage.

[kiliki]

[RodF]

charred remains of Falls Shelter

Here's the real threat to Wilderness trail shelters. A year after Olympic Park Associates won it's lawsuit, preventing reconstruction of Home Sweet Home and Low Divide shelters in Olympic NP, Falls Shelter on the Gray Wolf River was targeted by an arsonist. At the same time, the arsonist also torched the privy, hidden about 50 yards away in the forest. The court order to remove Green Mountain Lookout cites the shelter decision as precedent, and also now hampers maintenance of other historic structures in both USFS and NPS Wilderness areas. The threat to shelters is the desire of some (such as Wilderness Watch, Olympic Park Associates, NCCC) to "rewild" Wilderness by destroying its history... whether through the courts (what career NPS Ranger Jack Nattinger called "legalized arson") or by more direct means... just plain old arson. 7/19/16 Note to Tim: I have never, here or elsewhere, accused you of arson. But if you choose to be offended, to quote Frank Herbert, “My son displays a general garment and you claim it’s cut to your fit? What a fascinating revelation.”