Ike Kinswa State Park History

Ike Kinswa State Park encompasses a rich history about the ways in which natural resources have been stewarded and exploited at the historic confluence of the Tilton and Cowlitz Rivers, now flooded by the reservoir behind Mayfield Dam.

The Cowlitz River is born in the glacial ice on the slopes of Mount Rainier and receives tributaries from other Cascade Mountain peaks along its journey to the Columbia River. Despite impediments to fish passage from several hydroelectric dams, the Cowlitz watershed supports native runs of fall and spring Chinook salmon, coho, summer and winter steelhead and cutthroat trout, as well as large hatchery runs.

Indigenous Lands

Ike Kinswa State Park lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation.

The traditional territory of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe extends from the “Cowlitz Corridor,” a long-used travel route between the Columbia River and Puget Sound, east to the crest of the Cascade Mountains. Within the expansive territory of the Cowlitz River Valley, two distinct but interrelated groups of Cowlitz people overlap in the vicinity of today’s Ike Kinswa State Park.

The Upper Cowlitz (Taidnapaum), living generally upvalley from today’s park, have strong ties to Sahaptin-speaking people on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains, maintained through family ties and common use of the extensive huckleberry fields in the upper elevations of the Cascade Mountains.

The Lower Cowlitz, centered around the Cowlitz Prairie, are strongly connected to the Coast Salish language and culture common to most Indigenous people around Puget Sound and the Columbia River. The Cowlitz people developed trading relationships in all directions, establishing wealth and stability with networks that allowed the exchange of coastal resources such as shellfish and cedar for interior products including horses, camas roots, dried berries and mountain goat wool.

The daughter of Cowlitz Chief Scanewa, Veronique, married French Canadian fur trader Simon Plamondon in the 1830s, leading to the establishment of the Hudson Bay Company farm at Cowlitz Prairie in 1838, further increasing the stature of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe in the region.

In 1919, Bureau of Indian Affairs special agent Charles F. Roblin wrote that the Cowlitz were “a powerful tribe … and in the early days constituted the ‘blue blood’ of Western Washington. They were independent, fearless and aggressive.”

Cowlitz tribal leaders refused to accept the conditions proposed by Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens at the Chehalis River Treaty Council in February 1855. Stevens had proposed that the Cowlitz, Chehalis and other Indigenous people move from their homelands to the Quinault Indian Reservation on the Pacific Ocean coast. Tribal leaders asked to negotiate for a reservation within their own traditional territory, but Governor Stevens refused.

A Tribe Dispossessed

Subsequently, ownership of their land was eroded by government policies. On March 20, 1863, just two months after his Emancipation Proclamation freed Black Americans from slavery, President Abraham Lincoln signed an order extinguishing Indian title to a portion of the Cowlitz territory, offering the lands for transfer to private ownership by sale or by “proving up” as homesteads. Additional areas of Cowlitz territory were opened for privatization as government surveys were completed.

On February 20, 1893, President Benjamin Harrison established the Pacific Forest Reserve centered on the headwaters of the Cowlitz River. The forest reserve was later enlarged and redesignated as Mount Rainier National Park and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. In 1904, Cowlitz leaders filed a claim for compensation for the taking of their lands.

In 1973, the Indian Claims Commission settled the compensation claim, awarding the tribe $1.5 million. The Cowlitz Indian Tribe submitted a request for federal recognition in 1975 and recognition was acknowledged in 2000.

Because the Cowlitz Indian Tribe was not party to a treaty to cede their lands and did not agree to reside on a reservation, many Cowlitz families continued to live in their traditional homelands centered on the prairies of the Cowlitz Valley, including the area near today’s Ike Kinswa State Park.

On July 4, 1884, the US Congress passed the Indian Homestead Act, providing that Indigenous people living on public land could file for ownership of the land they occupied. Unlike other homestead patentees, however, Indigenous homestead patents would be held in trust by the federal government for 25 years.

The Kinswas

Isaac Ike Kinswa was born about 1835 and lived near the confluence of today’s Tilton and Cowlitz Rivers. Like many other Cowlitz tribal members in the area, he worked on logging crews rafting cedar bolts on the rivers and manning the boats that carried the logging camps. He applied for an Indian Homestead patent on the 76 acres he resided on which was approved on February 4, 1890. On his death in 1910, the land passed to his son John Ike Kinswa.

John Ike Kinswa served as Chairman of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe from 1922-1924, working to maintain tribal identity and continue the tribe’s compensation claim. Over time, portions of the Kinswa homestead parcel were sold. John’s son James Kinswa was born in 1917. After serving in the US Army  during World War II, he inherited the nine acres remaining of the Kinswa homestead in the 1960s. Many of Kinswa’s descendants live in the area today, filling important roles in the community and raising their families.

Mayfield Dam

In the 1940s, the City of Tacoma sought to build additional hydroelectric generating capacity to meet the city’s growing need for electricity. When it announced plans to dam the Cowlitz River in 1948, it drew immediate opposition from local fishers and the Washington State Department of Game.

To protect the river, local activists submitted an initiative to the state legislature. On February 14, 1949, Governor Arthur B. Langlie approved Senate Bill # 4, which established “an anadromous fish sanctuary against undue industrial encroachment for the preservation and development of the food and game fish resources” and prohibited “any dam or other obstruction over 25 feet high on any tributary stream of the Columbia River …. including the Cowlitz River and its tributaries.”

After court challenges which ultimately ended at the US Supreme Court, the City of Tacoma won the right to construct dams on the Cowlitz River. Construction began on Mayfield Dam in 1955 but was halted by a separate lawsuit by the Cowlitz Indian Tribe in 1957. The City prevailed in that suit as well, and construction resumed in 1959.

Mayfield Dam was completed in 1963 with a 250-foot-high, 850-foot-long concrete arch and gravity dam that impounds the 2,250 acre Mayfield Lake reservoir. An 854-foot-long power tunnel passes through the right abutment of the dam and feeds four penstocks that continue to the four generating units, which have an installed capacity of 162 megawatts.

In 1967, the City of Tacoma approved funding of two hatcheries to mitigate impacts to the salmon and steelhead populations on the Cowlitz River.

Making a Park

On July 15, 1962, The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) entered into an agreement with Tacoma City Light (now Tacoma Power) to manage a recreation area on the Mayfield Lake reservoir. The park area was centered around the portion of the reservoir that flooded the confluence of the Tilton and Cowlitz Rivers, with shoreline access for swimming, fishing and boating opportunities.

As designs emerged for development of the land for park purposes, the WSPRC favored a landscape plan that required the acquisition of the nine acres of land belonging to James Kinswa for the location of the park entrance road. James proved difficult to locate, prompting the WSPRC to consider acquiring the property by eminent domain, but eventually the land was purchased for $9,000 in 1967.

As the park’s opening date approached, sixth grade students at the nearby Mossyrock School appealed to their representative in the state legislature to name the park for local Indigenous artist Mary Kiona, who had recently passed away, more than 115 years old.

Rev. J. Melvin Core heard about the request and suggested that the park name should instead memorialize the Kinswa family that had long ties to that specific location.  Rev. Core recounted that his father had met the elder Kinswa in July 1888 when he had walked from Centralia to claim a homestead adjacent to Ike Kinswa’s home. Kinswa had met him and rowed him across the river in his canoe.

On March 22, 1971, Governor Daniel J. Evans approved Engrossed House Bill # 50, stating:

“The legislature finds it appropriate to honor and preserve the memory of Ike Kinswa, who passed away many years ago, by renaming this park as a memorial to him, both as an individual and as a representative of the original inhabitants of a region which is now a part of the state of Washington.”

Ike Kinswa State Park was dedicated on July 4, 1972.

Patty Kinswa-Geiser, a great-granddaughter of Ike Kinswa and former Cowlitz Indian Tribe General Council Chair, and her daughter, Suzanne Donaldson (great-great-granddaughter of Ike Kinswa), were consulted in the process of researching the history of Ike Kinswa State Park.