The Snoqulamie’s Middle Fork is Washington State’s latest conservation success story

The Mid­dle Fork of the Sno­qualmie Riv­er, east of North Bend, is the clos­est Cas­cade moun­tain val­ley to Seat­tle, the region’s largest city.

Two decades ago, it was large­ly ignored by fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments, and was rapid­ly becom­ing a moun­tain crime zone and trash dump.

The val­ley has expe­ri­enced a trans­for­ma­tion, although – as with every­thing wild and nat­ur­al – pro­tec­tion is an ongo­ing challenge.

A touch­stone in the valley’s recov­ery came last week, when the last, twen­ty-six acre par­cel of state-owned school trust land was incor­po­rat­ed into the Mid­dle Fork Sno­qualmie Nat­ur­al Resource Nat­ur­al Area.

Its pur­chase price was $140,000 out of the Trust Land Trans­fer Pro­gram, fund­ed by the Leg­is­la­ture. The mon­ey goes to the state’s Com­mon Schools Trust.

“This land­scape is a won­der for all to enjoy, and one that is now pre­served for all gen­er­a­tions,” said State Land Com­mis­sion­er Hilary Franz.

She described the val­ley as “amaz­ing.”

What’s real­ly amaz­ing is that the place has been saved, by cit­i­zens and pub­lic offi­cials, by those used to stitch­ing togeth­er good deeds and one guy whose spe­cial­ty in Con­gress was block­ing good deeds.

The Mid­dle Fork in the late 1990s was awful. Peo­ple hauled garbage there for dump­ing. A large meth lab was in oper­a­tion, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing soil and ground water. A group of Russ­ian crim­i­nal types ran an auto­mo­bile chop shop beneath Russ­ian Butte. The road, with deep pot­holes, was noto­ri­ous as an axle buster.

The ini­tial impe­tus to save the place came from the Alpine Lakes Pro­tec­tion Soci­ety (ALPS), the cit­i­zen group which cam­paigned for cre­ation of the 393,000-acre name­sake wilder­ness area, cre­at­ed by Con­gress in 1976.

Then-Gov­er­nor Dan Evans brought a pic­ture book to the White House in per­suad­ing Pres­i­dent Ford to sign the legislation.

We had Repub­li­can con­ser­va­tion­ists then.

The Mid­dle Fork is out­side the wilder­ness, but not out­side the purview of such con­ser­va­tion­ists as Red­mond teacher Mike Town.

ALPS vol­un­teers began haul­ing loads of trash out of the val­ley. They put heat on the U.S. For­est Ser­vice to be a bet­ter stew­ard of its holdings.

An unlike­ly bene­fac­tor emerged. Sen­a­tor Slade Gor­ton, R‑Washington, chaired the Sen­ate Inte­ri­or Appro­pri­a­tions Subcommittee.

Oppo­si­tion to old growth for­est preser­va­tion had put him on con­ser­va­tion­ists’ “Dirty Dozen” list. Seek­ing to bur­nish his image going into the 2000 cam­paign, Gor­ton found mon­ey for the val­ley. Cleanup of the meth lab cost a mil­lion bucks. The For­est Ser­vice put in a large camp­ground in mid-valley.

In turn, the camp­ground forced both the For­est Ser­vice and law enforce­ment to pay more atten­tion to the val­ley. When Gor­ton paid a vis­it to ded­i­cate the camp­ground, he received praise from con­ser­va­tion­ists and one jour­nal­ist long at odds with the sen­a­tor. “Why didn’t you write that before the elec­tion?” he asked. (Gor­ton was defeat­ed by Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell in 2000 in an upset.)

The sec­ond major preser­va­tion action came six years ago.

Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dave Reichert cospon­sored leg­is­la­tion to des­ig­nate the Mid­dle Fork under the fed­er­al Wild and Scenic Rivers pro­gram. They also sought to put the Pratt Riv­er val­ley into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.

Try as he might, Reichert could not move the bill through the Repub­li­can-run House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives: The chief obsta­cle was dour Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Doc Hast­ings, chair­man of the House Nat­ur­al Resources Committee.

Doc didn’t like wilder­ness, want­ed to gut the Endan­gered Species Act, and denounced Pres­i­dent Oba­ma for des­ig­nat­ing nation­al mon­u­ments, even one pro­tect­ing prized beau­ty spots in the San Juan Islands of his home state.

Mur­ray made a project of Hastings.

After the Oso land­slide, when Hast­ings asked what he could do to help, Mur­ray per­suad­ed him to push leg­is­la­tion that would pre­vent removal of the Green Moun­tain look­out, a pop­u­lar hik­ing des­ti­na­tion in the Glac­i­er Peak Wilderness.

The deed was done. Doc Hast­ings was due to retire from Con­gress in 2014. With gen­tle prod­ding from Mur­ray aid­ed by Reichert, he was at last per­suad­ed to let Mid­dle Fork pro­tec­tion and Pratt Riv­er wilder­ness go into an omnibus con­ser­va­tion bill. Sev­en years in the mak­ing, it passed.

The Mid­dle Fork is a trans­formed place.

Its clearcut­ting of state tim­ber­lands once prompt­ed the Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources to be giv­en a nick­name, “the Depart­ment of Noth­ing Remain­ing.” But the DNR has now con­served 23,000 acres in the com­bined Mid­dle Fork Sno­qualmie and near­by Mount Si Nat­ur­al Resources Con­ser­va­tion Areas.

Out­door recre­ation in the val­ley is also transformed.

If you bound­ed out to the end of the val­ley road, glo­ri­ous hik­ing beck­oned in the heart of the Alpine Lakes Wilder­ness Area. Sev­en miles into scenic Williams Lake, and then a rock scram­ble up to LaBohn Gap.

One of the Chain Lakes tarns offered arguably the best skin­ny dip­ping in the Cas­cades, with rocks to dive off and 40 yards of icy cold water in between.

The upper road is long closed. But a net­work of new trails has emerged down­stream in the val­ley, tak­ing you beside rush­ing waters and beneath moun­tain cliffs. The walls of Mount Garfield can be ogled from down below, plus being an out­door lab­o­ra­to­ry for rock climbers.

Con­sult the Wash­ing­ton Trains Asso­ci­a­tion web­site for hikes in the val­ley, which is bare­ly an hour from pop­u­la­tion cen­ters of the Pugetopolis.

Kudos to the polit­i­cal fig­ures whose good deeds are vis­i­ble in the Mid­dle Fork. The val­ley is a Slade Gor­ton lega­cy, how­ev­er much we may dis­agree with his oth­er deeds. It is an exam­ple of Sen­a­tor Murray’s abil­i­ty to stitch togeth­er leg­is­la­tion with unlike­ly allies. On a mem­o­rably mis­er­able day, Mur­ray and Reichert trudged through the mud where forks of the Sno­qualmie Riv­er come togeth­er, try­ing to put a spot­light on the case for the Mid­dle Fork.

The Pratt Riv­er is a neat place, with a high-up series of lakes.

In his eight­ies, cel­e­brat­ing knee replace­ments, Dan Evans went skin­ny dip­ping in one of them. Hilary Franz has bur­nished the con­ser­va­tion role of DNR, from Blan­chard Moun­tain, south of Belling­ham to the banks of the Mid­dle Fork.

Still… as with most of our con­ser­va­tion achieve­ments, cit­i­zens applied the ini­tial pres­sure and began cleanup of the Mid­dle Fork.

It has been amus­ing, dur­ing cel­e­bra­tions in the val­ley, to see its own “first respon­ders” hang­ing back dur­ing speechi­fy­ing by officialdom.

We live in a cor­ner of Amer­i­ca that has not been used up. A lot of us choose to live here because you can eas­i­ly reach a place like the Mid­dle Fork, or lose your­self in more remote and wilder places.

Our lega­cy of con­ser­va­tion is strong, but our work is nev­er done.