Up here, historically, rumor wanders of the logging companies HATING the Pillar Point recreational area's trees because it was a knot in their rope of clear-cuts on Highway 112.
Well, a logging company managed to get it. This formerly beautiful tunnel of maples and conifers - a refuge to locals needing a break and shellfish and a growing number of tourists on their way to spend money on the west end - is just a crumble of stumps.
When the Scenic Route was launched, one of the logging company officials said to me, "We're going to use this to show people what a working forest looks like." As a reasonable person, I assumed he might mean that a compromise had been reached, in which some of the forest was worked while other parts were allowed for scenic - that is, tourism dollar - value.
112 was subjected to a full-blown clearcut attack. It looks like the Taliban has been here.
Note: The signs going up here are not only expensive, but they contain that phrase. This kind of print run - and others appearing on the peninsula - cost money. Whose?
The ripping down of Pillar Point's trees: Theft? State park staff collusion? What? Is it an attempt to damage the growing and sustainable tourist industry (or, as resource industries die - and they always do - the desperate historical urge to get the last bit squeezed out before the collapse?)?
Is this even in the local papers yet? Will it ever be?
Note: An Elwha tribal member reported that there are survivors of a logging company bulldozing of the river - making it unnavigable - and the homes of the Elwha river tribal community, while members were "in Port Angeles to go to a party." When asked why such a thing would have been done, the reply was, "To get rid of Indians."
Them's the reports, or at least the un-detailed and unatributed version I'm releasing now. Put 'em together as may be needed, and ask the pertinent parties the relevant questions.
