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Community Profile - Forks: Logging Town at a Crossroads |
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Written On: July/August 2005 |
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Written By: by Ron Dalby |
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Everybody in town agrees about what Forks used to be 30 years ago. In case anyone might forget, there’s a reminder in the form of an 11-foot-plus diameter slice of cedar smack in the middle of downtown that holds a plaque calling Forks the "Logging Capital of the World." The cedar slab and the plaque have been there a long time.
According to some, being a logging town in the heyday of clear-cutting during the 1970s meant plenty of money and big, burly loggers looking for a place to spend it. The dozen saloons in town were known both for two-fisted drinking and two-fisted fighting. The patrons, after all, spent their days wresting a living from the rain forest where a crippling injury or even death lurked behind every tree. Who could blame them if they wanted to unwind by raising a little hell after work?
The bars are gone now; not a single one remains in the city limits. Gone, too, are the fat paychecks that the loggers would cash each week. There is less agreement these days about what Forks is or where it’s headed. The only real agreement is that the town is not booming or growing. The population in the latest census came out about the same as it was 30 years ago. But, most people are quick to tell you that the town is pulling itself back up from the depths of economic depression. They disagree, however, on how far the comeback has progressed.
One of those who doesn’t think Forks has bounced very far back is Bob Zornes. He and his wife Arlene own and operate the Forks 101 RV Park on the southern edge of downtown, a very pretty, well-maintained property landscaped with all manner of flowering plants.
"I made more money in a month cutting cedar back in the 1970s than I make in a year now with the RV park," Zornes said. He hands over old pictures from his logging days, one of which shows him standing on a massive cedar log with one leg in a cast.
"Forks has bottomed out," he continued. "I think its going up, but its been a long time." He reinforces his thoughts on how bad it once was with 20-year-old newspaper clippings that claim unemployment rates of nearly 24 percent. Zornes says it was more like 26 percent.
Not everybody, however, thinks Forks is still near rock bottom. Forks Chamber of Commerce Director Diane Schostak offers a much more upbeat assessment of Forks’ recovery than does Zornes. She points to a growing tourism industry and stresses the idea that the community is looking to three "Ts"—timber, technology and tourism—as a means of latching onto a bigger piece of the economic pie.
"Logging is not dead," Schostak said, "but it’s a different critter than it was. Trees don’t grow better anywhere else in the world than here."
She describes the logging cutbacks of the 1980s and 1990s as both a catalyst and a bomb blast. Most logging now, according to Schostak, is on second-growth forests with even some third-growth areas either being cut or approaching marketability.
As for tourism, she proudly points out that inquiries have jumped tenfold—from 2,000 to 20,000 a year—in just the past few seasons. Forks itself isn’t exactly a destination, but it is surrounded by heavily visited destinations and is the largest town for miles in any direction. The fishing and hunting are quite good, parts of Olympic National Park all but surround the town, and the scenic Washington coast is little more than a dozen miles away.
As for technology, Schostak proudly boasts that Forks is very wired; it’s on a fiber-optic loop for high-speed communication. A loop means that even if the line is cut on one side of town, the internet and its environs can still be accessed.
Nevertheless, this has not, as yet, translated to any technology industries setting up shop in town. Mayor Nedra Reed notes that the technology companies best suited for Forks are not the big ones, but smaller entities having maybe 50 to 100 employees. Reed is a retired Washington corrections officer in her first term as mayor. Her biggest worry is providing the services her community wants and needs with very limited revenue.
Reed does, however, cite one unusual source of city revenue—a 40-bed jail. This allows Forks to rent beds to other agencies, municipal and state, that may have a shortage of space in which to house prisoners.
The kind of business that can help Forks best, according to Reed, is a "...natural resources industry that can provide steady employment and a living wage." Despite the lure of technology, she says, "We are a natural-resources-based economy—timber, fish and a new focus on tourism."
And there is still visible logging in the area. In early June, the residue of a recently harvested clear-cut was burning south of town near Highway 101, and a small group of loggers was removing timber from a fresh cut northeast of town.
But it’s not like it was and never will be again. Perhaps the town’s biggest tourist attraction says it best. The Forks Timber Museum on the south side of town pays homage to the timber and the loggers who drug it from the forest. Sherrill Fouts, often behind the counter in the museum, can explain everything in the museum from a cedar canoe several hundred years old—unearthed by loggers, of course—to faded photographs of a logging past still remembered by many who cling to their homes in Forks.
By its very nature, logging is a mobile industry. Once the trees in a given area were cut, loggers moved on to where they could cut more. Yet a lot of people in Forks stayed after the crash and the spotted owl controversy, probably for the simple reason that there was no cutting anywhere on the scale of the 1970s. Put more simply, there were no jobs to be had for loggers.
"You don’t live in Forks unless you want to be here," according to Schostak. "The quality of life is good."
Finally, Mayor Reed expresses her goals along similar lines. "I hope this town is still going to have a trusting, caring spirit and non-polluting industry so people can have this quality of life."
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