Fields Spring State Park History

Fields Spring State Park has long been a summer oasis of wildflower-filled forest and a winter paradise for snowshoers and skiers. The park occupies a corner of the Blue Mountains, rising high above the arid landscape of the Columbia Plateau below.

A Birthplace of the Columbia Plateau

Fields Spring State Park is situated near the source of the hundreds of basalt lava eruptions that flowed over most of eastern Washington, creating the Columbia Plateau. Called flood basalts, these flows erupted from fissures in the ground located over a plume of molten magma from deep in the Earth’s interior. The stationary hotspot formed by the plume is now located beneath Yellowstone National Park, as the North American Plate has slowly inched toward the northwest over millions of years.

The first eruptions of lava began about 16.7 million years ago, producing nearly three-quarters of the total volume of the Columbia River Basalt over the course of about the first 400,000 years. Eruptions were not continuous—about 100 eruptive episodes during the period were separated by thousands of years in between each one. This mass of rock is now known as the Grande Ronde Basalt, named for the river in the 3,000-foot-deep canyon below today’s Fields Spring State Park. The Wanapum Basalt, which includes flows forming the signature attractions in Palouse Falls State Park and Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park, erupted sporadically during the next one million years, adding many more individual layers.

The final phase of the Columbia River Basalt flows, the Saddle Mountains Basalt, includes more than 20 small-volume flows that ended about six million years ago. One of the oldest of these is an approximately 100-foot-thick phase called the Basalt of Sillusi. Puffer Butte, the highest point in today’s Fields Spring State Park, was the main eruptive vent for the Sillusi lava flows. Amazingly, the structure of the feeder tubes leading to the surface at the vent are now exposed as wall-like dikes, revealed by the erosion of the Grande Ronde River Canyon.

After the eruptions stopped, the Earth’s crust, depressed by the weight of thousands of feet of heavy basalt rock, slowly began to rebound upwards. The Grande Ronde River, which had developed a meandering course across the land’s surface, began to cut downwards as the land rose. The river’s twists and turns were preserved as the “goosenecks” that can be seen in the canyon today.

Indigenous Lands

Fields Spring State Park lies within the traditional territories of Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Nez Perce Tribe and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation.

Most of the Indigenous people of today’s eastern Washington have a tradition of annual subsistence rounds to harvest and preserve seasonally available foods and resources from a wide variety of locations and environments; many would frequent the same places, building bonds of kinship through shared experiences, trade and marriages. The area of today’s Fields Spring State Park was typically visited in the mid- to late-summer months for harvesting berries and hunting.

Representatives of numerous Indigenous people with traditional territories in the region negotiated and signed treaties with Territorial Governor Isaac I. Stevens at Walla Walla on June 9, 1855. The treaties would not be ratified by the US Senate until 1859, and in the interim, the benefits promised by the treaties were not available to the tribes that had signed. Most Indigenous people chose to initially continue their seasonal rounds, rather than be confined to reservations as stipulated in the treaties. Trespass by American settlers led to armed conflict between Indigenous warriors and the US Army, culminating in the Battle of Spokane Plains on September 5, 1858. Ultimately, Indigenous lands were relinquished to the US government and the people largely moved to the designated reservations.

Statehood Land Grant

After completion of the government surveys in 1879, most of the land in today’s Fields Spring State Park was conveyed to the State of Washington at statehood in 1889. The grant was a portion of the millions of acres of public domain lands given to the state to manage as a trust “for all the people” in support of public institutions, especially public schools.  

The state trust land in today’s park was leased to neighboring ranchers for grazing allotments, providing income to public trust beneficiaries. One of those ranchers was Benjamin F. Fields, who, with his wife Mary, purchased 160 acres adjacent to the state trust land on the east as a Cash Entry Patent in 1905, a type of sale of federal public domain lands to private individuals. Fields developed his namesake spring to provide a water source for his grazing animals on the state trust land. He died in 1923, and the grazing lease expired in July 1929.

A.J. Puffer, a Civil War veteran, and his wife Adelia, occupied the land to the south of the state trust land in 1877, building a cabin and running cattle. They didn’t apply for a homestead claim after the land was surveyed, instead moving to the town of Dayton where A.J. ran a store and Adelia established a restaurant. Their surname stuck to the butte, though.

In 1901, Lulu B. Fargusson purchased a 160-acre parcel, including the summit and southern slopes of Puffer Butte, as a Cash Entry Patent.

Making a Park

In the era before air conditioning was widely available, many families from the Clarkston-Lewiston area would set up primitive summer camps in the higher-elevation forest of the state trust land that is now Fields Spring State Park. Workers would stay in town for the week, returning each weekend to their spouse and children at the campsite.

When the Fields’ grazing lease on the property expired in 1929, Commissioner of Public Lands Clark V. Savidge determined that it would not be renewed, but instead the land would be reserved for park purposes. On October 2, 1930, Savidge reported to the State Parks Committee that 99 acres of trust land had been reserved.

Already, the Asotin County chapter of the Izaak Walton League, a nationwide wildlife conservation group, had begun volunteering to build park facilities. Toilets and picnic tables were built by male volunteers, according to a report in the Asotin County Sentinel, while the female volunteers cleared brush and trash. Clarence Butler was hired as the first park superintendent, a position he continued to hold until 1945.

Depression-era relief funds appropriated by the legislature were used to hire local unemployed men to build an access road into the park in 1933, and funds from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), established by the Roosevelt administration later employed workers to build the park caretaker’s house, replacing the seasonal cabin built by Clarence Butler. Butler continued to oversee additional projects, including the Camp Fire Girls building (now Wohelo Lodge) in 1935. On August 7, 1942, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) officially named the park as Fields Spring State Park.

Like many parks, Fields Spring State Park grew from an initial parcel of land into a much larger protected area over the course of many years:

• The 160-acre parcel containing the summit and southern slopes of Puffer Butte was purchased by the WSPRC from the Campbell family on February 6, 1950, for $2,000.
• On January 25, 1951, Governor Arthur B. Langlie authorized the sale of 80 acres of state trust land, including the site of today’s Puffer Butte Lodge and Retreat Center (built in 1955), to the WSPRC for $800.
• On April 17, 1962, Commissioner of Public Lands Bert L. Cole formally reserved the original 99-acre tract for park purposes. This acreage included Fields Spring, today’s park campground, teepees and the Wohelo Lodge rental facility. Unlike the original park reserve, Cole’s order stipulated that the property would be leased to the WSPRC for an annual rental fee of 1% of the real estate value of the land.
• On December 30, 1970, Commissioner Cole reserved an additional 117 acres for park purposes, including the complete route of today’s Larch Loop Ski Trail and parts of several others, expanding the park’s recreational opportunities.

In 1971 the Washington State Legislature decided that continued lease of trust lands for park purposes was not in the best interest of the state and directed the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the WSPRC to negotiate a sale of the leased lands. The two agencies entered into a contract for the purchase of 15,083 acres in 24 parks, including 216 acres in Fields Spring State Park, at a total purchase price of $11.4 million. However, the timber on the lands was excluded from the contract, as there was no source of funding. The timber in Fields Spring State Park alone was appraised to be 830,000 board feet valued at $164,000. In 1980, the legislature authorized the sale of bonds to cover the cost of the timber; on October 7, 1992, the final payment on the contract was made and the timber was deeded to the WSPRC, assuring its permanent protection. 

In 1973, a rapidly increasing population of tussock moths defoliated up to 75% of the trees within Fields Spring State Park. The WSPRC authorized a salvage logging operation that required the park to be closed. The pesticide DDT was used to reduce the tussock moth population, probably with negative impacts on other species as well.

In 1989, the Washington State Legislature authorized the Trust Land Transfer Program. The legislature funds the transfer of state trust lands with special ecological or social values that have low income potential out of state trust ownership to a public agency that can manage the property for those values. Money from the transfer provides revenue for the trust beneficiaries and is used to buy productive replacement properties that will generate future trust income.

On June 20, 1991, the WSPRC acquired 337 acres of state trust land adjacent to Fields Spring State Park under terms of the Trust Land Transfer Program with a legislative appropriation of $341,000 to the trust. The expansion, nearly doubling the size of the park, added biodiversity to the park by including land along the valley of Rattlesnake Creek with grassland and forest ecological niches.