Mount Pilchuck State Park History

The story of Mount Pilchuck State Park goes deep. The distinctive blocks of light-colored quartz monzonite (a rock like granite but with a smaller proportion of quartz crystals) that a hiker must scramble over to reach the historic fire lookout were once molten magma slowly cooling thousands of feet below the earth’s surface. The mechanisms of plate tectonic subduction elevated the rocks to 5,324 feet above sea level to put Mount Pilchuck’s prominent alpine summit barely 18 miles from salt water at the Snohomish River estuary.

Indigenous Lands

Mount Pilchuck lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Tulalip Tribes and Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians. For thousands of years the peak of Mount Pilchuck has provided habitat for a diverse community of life important to their cultures, including mountain goats on its high crags. Indigenous hunters sought mountain goats for their fur, which could be crafted into comfortably insulating garments.

Local tribes ceded ownership of the area to the US government in the Treaty of Point Elliot in 1855, keeping rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the forests, meadows and rocky cliffs of Mount Pilchuck.

Forest Reserve

When Washington Territory was created by an act of Congress in 1853, survey sections 16 and 36 in each township were reserved to be granted to the eventual State of Washington to be held in trust to support public institutions. A government survey of the area around Mount Pilchuck was published in 1897, but the rugged upper slopes of the mountain were labeled as “mountainous; unsurveyed” until additional surveying was completed in 1923. Meanwhile, the Washington Forest Reserve had been proclaimed by Executive Order of President Grover Cleveland on February 22, 1897. It included the “spurs and slopes of the Cascade Range from the divide nearly down to the level country bordering Puget Sound” with Mount Pilchuck anchoring the southwest corner of the reserve. 

To fulfill the land grant promised to the State of Washington at statehood in 1889, county commissioners in counties containing Forest Reserves were authorized to locate other lands of equal extent “in lieu of” the unavailable lands. To make up enough land, some land including Mount Pilchuck was removed from the Reserve and transferred to the State of Washington on October 13, 1926, as a “lieu land” selection.

Fire Lookout

Before the transfer, though, Mount Pilchuck had been chosen as the site for one of the first forest fire detection lookouts built in Washington. Initially, the fire spotting was done with an Osborne Fire Finder mounted on a post in a rock pile at Pilchuck’s summit, in use sometime before 1918. The device is composed of a laminated map of the area seen from the lookout point mounted on a circular steel base with a rotating ring. Graduated marks on the rim of the ring and sighting guides mounted to the ring allow a user to estimate the location and elevation of a wildland fire. Before construction of a building at the site, fire spotters stayed in a tent nearby.

In 1918, the US Forest Service ordered a prefabricated 12’ x 12’ building to be assembled on the summit of Mt. Pilchuck. US Forest Service personnel improved the trail to the peak and blasted rock at the summit to make room for the small cabin with a cupola on top. To get the materials to the site, a cable winch was constructed to lift loads of supplies above the highest point the pack string could travel. The lookout was completed by 1921 and staffed each summer. A new 14’ x 14’ lookout was built around the old one in 1941 or 1942. This lookout is still standing on the mountain, although it was no longer used for fire detection after 1960.

Ecological Study

In 1949 ecologists Harry W Higman (1883-1969) and Earl J. Larrison (1919-1987) published The Life of a Mountain, a story of their experiences on Mount Pilchuck which advanced the ecological concept of habitat niches. They highlighted the pika and marmot, animals that are adapted to the heavy winter snows of Mount Pilchuck, but in very different ways. Marmots fatten up and hibernate under the blanket of snow while pikas store food in passageways within the broken rocks of talus fields and live off their stores underneath the snow. The book introduced many people to the beauty and significance of Mount Pilchuck.

Mountaintop State Park

On March 15, 1951, Governor Arthur B. Langlie approved House Bill 204, authorizing the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission to acquire land from the Commissioner of Public Lands to “survey, plan and develop said property as a state park which may hereafter be designated and known as Mount Pilchuck State Park.”

In 1956, the US Forest Service issued a permit to install a rope tow for skiing at the end of the logging road on the north side of the mountain, taking advantage of the occasionally deep snow that filled the slope.

On April 13,1960, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) requested the Commissioner of Public Lands to withdraw trust lands on the upper slopes of Mount Pilchuck. On December 5, 1960, Commissioner Bert Cole ordered the withdrawal of the lands for park purposes and authorized them to be leased to the WSPRC. On July 11, 1963, the fire lookout at Mount Pilchuck’s summit was included in the withdrawal.

Under an agreement with the US Forest Service, the WSPRC assumed management of the ski area concession, and a modest lodge, additional rope tows and two ski lifts were added. In 1969, a proposal was submitted by the concessionaire for significant expansion of the ski area, but the plans were never realized. In the late 1970s, the ski area did not open for two seasons due to insufficient snowfall and the concession permit expired in 1979.

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 the 1,903 acres in Mount Pilchuck 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 on the leased trust lands in Mount Pilchuck State Park alone was appraised to be more than 11.3 million board feet valued at $3,214,675, surpassed only by the value of timber in Lewis and Clark and Rockport State Parks among the leased park areas. In 1980, the legislature authorized the sale of bonds to cover the cost of the timber; on October 7, 1992, the contract for the purchase of the park’s timber was fulfilled and it was deeded to the WSPRC, securing its permanent protection. 

In 1990, 1,897 acres of the park were designated as a Natural Forest Area by the WSPRC, the largest contiguous protected forest area in the system.

The fire lookout underwent a major restoration under an agreement between the WSPRC and a non-profit recreation organization, the Everett Mountaineers, in 1989. 105 people volunteered 10,000 hours, with assistance from Snohomish County Search and Rescue and an Army Reserve helicopter. The lookout was listed on the National Historic Lookout Register on October 7, 1993.

The timeless experience of a sunset viewed from the summit was summed up very well in The Life of a Mountain:

The sky changed to orange in the west, then took on stripes of light violet. The lakes and Puget Sound became alternate patches of flat gray and darkness. The light violet color deepened to a mild and then a deep purple through which ran horizontal strips that resembled those made by a painter’s brush. The whole sky became a palette of varied hues. Little clouds began to float about in the valley far below us, night oozed from the ground, and all the land turned black. Just before darkness, a shell-pink band streaked the western horizon, faded out, and the day ended.