Seaquest State Park History

Seaquest State Park hugs the shore of Silver Lake in the foothills of Mount St. Helens, famous for its major eruption on May 18, 1980. A major attraction at the park is the Mount St. Helens Visitor Center, where the story of the mountain’s volcanic history is interpreted with exhibits, ranger programs and audio-visual media.

One Who Smokes

Mount St. Helens is the youngest and smallest of Washington’s five major volcanic peaks (Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, and Mount St. Helens). The mountain’s present eruptive stage began about 4,500 years ago. This stage has included seven eruptive periods. The dramatic eruption of 1980 was preceded by eruptions and dome building from 1800 to 1857, and previous to that was an eruption in 1480 which produced about six times the volume of eruptive tephra (rock fragments and ash) as the 1980 eruption!

The record is less clear about older eruptive periods, but geologists have determined that today’s Silver Lake was formed about 2,500 years ago when Outlet Creek, which drains its waters to the Toutle River, was dammed by a series of enormous lahars (muddy debris flows made up of a slurry of volcanic ash, rock and water). The lahars were produced when upstream lakes broke through natural dams created by debris avalanches from past eruptions of Mount St. Helens.

Indigenous Lands

The park lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish- and Sahaptin-language-speaking 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. For thousands of years this area has provided habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures from the region’s rivers and prairies to the summit of Lawetlat’la (translated as “one who smokes”), as Mount St. Helens is known to the Cowlitz and Yakama. In Cowlitz traditions, Lawetlat’la is a place where great spiritual power resides—a place to commune with nature and the forces that brought everything into being. It provides a link to the creation of their homeland, their landscape, and their creator.

“Lawetlat'la is as alive as any of us are alive. It breathes, it feels, it has vast vibrations of life. The mountain is alive, just as we believe everything is alive.” 

      --Tanna Engdahl, Cowlitz spiritual leader

Local tribes refused to accept the conditions proposed by Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens at the Chehalis River Treaty Council in February 1855, primarily his requirement that they leave their homelands and move to a reservation on the Pacific Coast. 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. The Cowlitz Tribe, pushed from their lands by settlers, did not receive federal recognition until 2000.

Homestead Settlers

After government land surveys were completed in 1859, much of the land in today’s Seaquest State Park passed into private ownership as a Homestead Entry patent to a Swedish immigrant, John Charles Seaquest (originally Carl Johan Pettersson Sjoquist) on January 15, 1876. Seaquest, his wife Caroline and sons Alfred and Charles Jr, lived at Silver Lake and also in Portland, OR, where the sons were business partners at Seaquest Brothers Hardware.

The land in the northern part of today’s park passed into private ownership as a Homestead Entry patent to David and Mary Germond on January 30, 1877. Their homestead was subsequently purchased by International Paper Company and managed for timber production.

Making a State Park

Neither of the Seaquest brothers ever married. When Alfred, the last surviving member of the family died in 1945, he bequeathed the family’s Silver Lake homestead property to the State of Washington for park purposes, stipulating in the deed that the property:

“… is to be used as a State Park and that the State shall never allow intoxicating liquor to be sold on said property…”

The transaction was approved by the Cowlitz County Superior Court on April 28, 1948. In 1962, state park staff met with representatives of International Paper Company to discuss adding the former Germond homestead land to Seaquest State Park. Local citizens gathered over 1,000 signatures on a petition urging the addition of the land to the park. Ultimately, the Washington Department of Natural Resources executed a land trade with International Paper Company to acquire the 147-acre property, and the Washington State Legislature authorized the transfer of the property to Seaquest State Park in two parcels in 1980 and 1982.

Mount St. Helens Visitor Center

In 1984, Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) entered into an agreement to permit the US Forest Service to build and operate a visitor center at Seaquest State Park to welcome visitors to the agency’s Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, established in 1982 to preserve the mountain’s volcanic features. The visitor center opened in December 1986. Washington State Parks staff began operating the center in 2000, and the building was formally transferred to the WSPRC in October 2007.