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State Parks’ professional arbor crew blends science, technology and tree work for public safety and conservation.

“What is your earliest tree memory?” Washington State Parks Arborist Mik Miazio once asked visitors at Millersylvania.  

Most recalled climbing trees or eating fruit from neighboring orchards. Grandparents’ houses and childhood backyards were common themes.  

Trees and forest ecosystems are among Washington’s icons, and many nature lovers equate the outdoors with trees. 

Formed by Glacial Meltwaters

Pearrygin Lake owes its existence to a quirk in the timing of melting glaciers. At the close of the Pleistocene ice age around 13,000 years ago, the huge Methow Valley glacier responsible for deepening the U-shaped Methow Valley persisted later than the tongues of ice that had flowed into the Chewack River Valley from a giant ice cap centered in today’s British Columbia.

Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park preserves a swath of semi-arid shrub-steppe in central Washington that hides a secret. Buried within the gravelly and sandy soils of the park’s landscape are remnants of an ancient forest, turned to stone by a fortunate convergence of geologic events.

Flood Basalts and Lahars

Ginkgo Petrified Forest lies near the western margin of the Columbia River Basalt Group, a geologic formation made up of hundreds of distinct lava flows that flooded over 80,000 square miles of Washington and Oregon.

A visitor to Old Ruby State Park Heritage Site is likely to find themselves alone among tall ponderosa pines gently swaying in the breeze. But if one could travel back in time to the late 1800s, there would have been a bustling town with a population of more than 1,000 on the site. Ruby City was one of the most consequential silver mining locations in the history of Washington, and its development generated intense excitement just as Washington became the 42nd state in the United States.