In a county meeting on Monday, Parks and Recreation Director Connie Riker told commissioners that rangers asked Discover Lewis County - the county’s tourism bureau - to stop advertising High Rock Lookout as a destination over a year ago. So far, the Forest Service’s response has been to discourage tourism. People come from far and wide to recreate in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, but its roads are still more fit for logging trucks than anything else. In Packwood alone, tourism has grown four-fold since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Lewis County Senior Long-Range Planner Mindy Brooks, who is also a Packwood resident. He remembers being told the next big industry for Lewis County - its supposed economic savior - would be tourism. He was there to watch it crumble, and remembers sharply the year 1996, when the last mill closed. He moved to Packwood in 1959, long before the fall of East Lewis County’s timber industry. On the long loop from the Tall Timber, down to Morton, up to Elbe, east to Skate Creek Road and back to Packwood - with a stop on FS-84 along the way - the commissioner has a captive audience for his message. Grose has determined the best way to show these folks what the roads need is to drive them. We load up into his Audi SUV, myself and Kohout in the back seat, with Swanson and Grose in the front. “She doesn’t believe in divorce, but she does believe in murder,” he says with a chuckle. But, according to him, his wife compels him to continue the volunteer service.
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Taking the port-a-potty, full to the brim, down the dusty logging road is a white-knuckle drive. If it were up to him, he would not take this arduous journey every week. Once a week, he takes a Goebel Septic port-a-potty down from High Rock Lookout on Forest Service Road 84 (FS-84), unloads it and heads back up with an empty one. Until his term ends in November, Grose has decided to make a fuss about the issue, with a special focus on the work needed to bring Forest Service Roads up to snuff. Maria Cantwell.Įast Lewis County has a problem that has become impossible to ignore: Its infrastructure is not ready for the massive increase in tourism from the last few years. Jaime Herrera Beutler’s office, and Sarah Kohout, who is there on behalf of U.S.
Once a month, folks gather here for breakfast to advocate for the area’s large population of veterans.Īs the last sips of coffee are downed and everyone walks out of the low-lit back room, Lewis County Commissioner and Packwood resident Lee Grose has other plans for attendees Colin Swanson, a representative from U.S.
Mist is coating the windshields outside the Tall Timber Restaurant and Lounge in Randle. By Isabel Vander Stoep / is a chilly Thursday morning.
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