Washington State Town Administrators Talk About The Rebirth Of Town Fueled By The Creative Vision Of Author Stephanie Meyer
In the misty meadows and dense spruce forests that carpet a small western part of Washington State, one writer had a dream of a land of Vampires.
Vampires who have skin that sparkles in the light of day, and who are good by nature… who are cautious because they know that vampires are largely misunderstood.
These vampires needed a place where the sun didn't shine much. For author Stephenie Meyer, author of the “Twilight” series, that was Forks, Washington.
This hamlet of 3,000 is one of the rainiest places in the United States, receiving upwards of 100 inches of precipitation a year. The extraordinary popularity of the Meyer’s books and mythology have attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors to share in the moist atmosphere and dense ecology of Western Washington.
Forks is also a place with an impressive and interesting history of lumber, saw milling, and in the early 1990s…an intense standoff with the federal government due to what many thought was an over-reach against the industry.
"Before ‘Twilight’ was published, there was quite a few stores boarded up," Lissy Andros, the president of the Fork's chamber, explains. "Forks was kind of at this standstill and I'm sure the economy was seeing no growth."
With the international success of ‘Twilight’ in the recent past, the town is growing again. Since the books were published, more than 400,000 people have signed the chamber's guest book. All of those people needed lodging, food, and gas as they travelled to the remote town that is the home of the Cullen family.
"People are coming here all year round for ‘Twilight’," Andros sys. "It has introduced people to this area. They make return trips. We do have people that relocate here."
That includes Andros herself.
“I came to Forks for the ‘Twilight’ Festival in 2009 and just fell in love with the town," Andros said.
Of course, there is a different side of Forks: Lumber. The town is surrounded on all sides by the Olympic rainforest, which includes massive pockets of Pica sitchensis, commonly called Sitka spruces, which managed by the U.S. Forest Service.
Don Grafstrom owned and operated Beaver Lumber Company for 20 years in Forks where he used a high-powered Mighty Mite saw that could cut pieces of lumber 31 feet long. His products were used for all kinds of applications, but the beams he cut could support very large buildings.
Like most who once cut the timber coming out of the forests in Clallam County, the business is over. The opportunity now gone as most of the area is protected. These days Grafstrom operates as a real estate agent.
"I just couldn’t get any more logs for my mill even though they were out there," Grafstrom said.
It turns out that the story of Forks is in part a story of local industry vs. the federal government in Washington.
In the early 1990s, a giant windstorm knocked over hundreds of old growth trees in the National Forest outside of town. Grafstrom and others in the timber industry asked the forest service for the right to go up and harvest those logs on the ground.
The answer was no. The reason? The spotted owl has its habitat in that same forest, and removing those logs would disrupt it. Spotted owls are a beautiful species called S. occidentalis, and they inhabit thin bands and isolated pockets of forests from Mexico, through the Rocky Mountains, and of course, into the Olympic Peninsula in the Western part of Washington State.
The government prohibited the extraction of the wind-fallen trees to protect the habitat of the bird, which riled some of the local lumbermen, who already harbored resentments against what they saw as an overreach by the government.
This was the birth of the Cold Creek 21, Grafstrom explains. They were 21 interested parties from the industry who decided, after a year of petitioning the government to remove those logs, that they were going to go up in the forest and begin cutting them up with – or without -- permission.
The result: 21 men with chainsaws were arrested. While 18 of them eventually skated on the charges, three men were convicted of federal felonies resulting from the standoff. It brings to mind more recent standoffs with the federal government over the use of public lands in the West.
"All those logs are rotting on the ground to this day, 20-some years later," Grafstrom said. “I don't think the spotted owls have benefited from it."
Despite this conflicted past, the town, both in and out of the woods, are made up of friendly folks who say hi, drive classic cars, and are generally in no hurry about their day. Perhaps some would prefer that the lumber industry had survived environmental protection, however, the pace of life doesn’t seem to mind.
"I think it feels almost like a place that time forgot - it is very quaint here," Andros said. "Just knowing that you get to see your friends and neighbors on a daily basis, and when someone asks how are you, they really want to know. It is a really incredible place."
For the vampirophiles, Forks is a kind of holy land. For the ecologist or bird watcher, the dense forest offers a deep and fascinating look at many unique species of birds and forest animals. For the lumberman, Forks no longer offers much. But the residents in town carry the rich history forward. And no one is complaining that Stephenie Myer had a vampire dream, and it turned into millions of dollars of tourist revenue for a tiny town tucked away in the woods.
David Irvin
A graduate with a Masters Of Science from the University Of North Texas, David has written on many beats including crime and business for such outlets as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Montgomery Advertiser & USA. He enjoys RVing and surfing the Internet.
Make Sure To Stay At:
Rainbow's End RV Park, a full service RV park located in Sequim, out on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, which offers full hook-up spaces for rigs ranging from class A motor homes to 20 foot travel trailers.