dense forest surrounding still lake water

Lake Sylvia State Park History

Among Lake Sylvia State Park’s peaceful trails and campsites are nearly hidden stories of ventures to wrest timber and hydroelectricity from the landscape.

Indigenous Lands

Lake Sylvia State Park lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation.

Local tribes refused to accept the conditions proposed by Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens at the Chehalis River Treaty Council in February 1855. Subsequently, title to the land was relinquished to the US federal government and the Chehalis Reservation was established by executive order of Secretary of the Interior J. P. Usher on July 8, 1864.

Land Distribution, Logging, and Family Stories

US government surveys were completed in 1876, and most of the land in today’s Lake Sylvia State Park passed into private ownership as a Cash Entry patent, a type of sale of public domain lands, to Michael Luark on June 30, 1880. Land surrounding the upper portion of Lake Sylvia was “proved up” as a Homestead Entry patent on July 3, 1890, by James N. Wilder. The life stories of the two men are intertwined.

Luark’s Mill

Michael Luark and his brother Patterson traveled the Oregon Trail in 1853. Michael left his wife Rebecca and their five children behind in Indiana with her parents. After arriving in Washington Territory, Luark worked at lumber mills and established a donation land claim near Centralia.

He left Washington to bring his family to his claim on October 22, 1855, by way of the California gold fields (where he earned a total of $63 doing carpentry), then by ship to Nicaragua and across that country’s giant lake and jungles to the Caribbean Sea, where he boarded a ship to New York. He arrived in Indiana early in 1856. With his family, he started the return journey west in 1857. It took 4 years for the Luarks to work their way back to Washington. Along the way they had three more children, and two of their daughters married men they met during their travels.

Arriving back in Washington Territory in 1861, Luark sold his donation land claim cabin to a squatter that had taken up residence in it in his absence and moved on to a homestead near Montesano.

Exploring for a location to establish a water-powered sawmill, he found a small lake he called “Lake Sylva” in 1866. He founded the Sylva Mill Company in 1869. He bartered lumber to be supplied when the mill began operation for machinery and a waterwheel to power the saws. The mill began operation on July 4, 1871, producing the first finished lumber three days later. The Sylva Mill was the first sawmill in Grays Harbor County, which would be dubbed the “Lumber Capital of the World” by the 1920s.

The natural lake extended only a short distance beyond the falls, and the log dam Luark constructed to facilitate the water-powered sawmill did not significantly extend it. The sawed lumber was hauled by oxen or horses until a water flume was constructed to float the lumber from the mill down to the Chehalis River for river boats to transport.

The company went bankrupt in 1885. Luark sold it to the Montesano Manufacturing and Improvement Company (MMIC) and moved to northern California to be near his brother Patterson. The MMIC continued to operate the mill and supplied water to the City of Montesano.

The Wilders

James N. Wilder arrived in Grays Harbor County in 1878 at age 23 and soon went to work at Luark’s mill at Lake Sylvia. Wilder married Luark’s youngest daughter Minnie in 1879. Minnie died after giving birth to their fourth child four years later. Wilder soon remarried and had 13 more children. Silas (the oldest child of James and Minnie) bought the Wilder homestead in 1905 and remained on the site, marrying Elsie Valentine in 1906.

Puget Sound Power and Light (PSPL) acquired the mill property and developed a hydroelectric generation station at the site in 1909. Silas and Elsie moved into the powerhouse building around 1914 when Elsie was hired to be the power plant operator, the first woman to hold that position in Washington, perhaps first in the United States.

PSPL built the current concrete buttress dam in 1918, raising the lake 16 feet and extending it farther up the valley. Elsie Wilder continued to operate the hydroelectric plant until it closed in 1936. In a change that is apparently lost to history, the name of the lake was changed to “Lake Sylvia.”

Creating a State Park

The City of Montesano purchased the logged watershed of Sylvia Creek for $12,000 in 1931. The city council wanted to assure that the source of the city’s water would be reforested and protected.

On October 23, 1936, the City of Montesano deeded 234 acres of the city watershed surrounding Lake Sylvia to the State Parks Committee for park purposes, recognizing the growing popularity of the lake as a destination for fishing, picnics and camping.

Works Progress Administration

In the 1930’s as the Great Depression deepened, people throughout Washington and across the US struggled with poverty as job losses and business closures erased their economic security. Newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved fast to provide material relief for suffering families. Unlike the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which provided employment opportunities for young single men, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was established to help unemployed men with families to support. The slogan “A hand up, not a hand out,” recognized that the program was providing a chance to work for a living and avoid the stigma of charity. Over the eight year life of the agency, more than 8.5 million people worked on more than 1.4 million individual projects.

WPA workers constructed two kitchen shelters and a bath house in Lake Sylvia State Park, which remain as a legacy to their workmanship.

Park for the Ages

Public comments received as part of the management planning process at Lake Sylvia State Park identified the need for an additional all-season kitchen shelter at the park. The non-profit organization Friends of Schafer and Lake Sylvia State Parks raised over $200,000 towards the design and construction of the Lake Sylvia Legacy Pavilion, completed in 2020. Designed by architect Will Foster, the new facility is in keeping with the rustic style of other park buildings. During the summer, the building is open-sided. In colder seasons, movable wall panels create an enclosed area highlighted by a tall fireplace.

Sharing the histories of Washington’s state parks is an ongoing project. Learn more here.

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