Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests

History

This proclamation preceded the Organic Act of 1897, which provided for administration and protection of the reserves. The earlier Forest Reserve Act of 1891 [the Act of March 3, 1891] merely allowed the president to set aside reserves from the public domain. One of these reserves, at the time under the jurisdiction of the General Land Office in the US Department of the Interior, covered both sides of the Cascade Mountains and included what is now the Okanogan, Wenatchee, and Mt. Baker-Snoqualamie national forests.The Washington Forest Reserve was headquartered for a short time in Everett, then Tacoma, and then, in turn, jurisdiction was established on individual proclaimed forests.

In 1905, the forest reserves were transferred from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture, and in the same year 33 Statute 861 allowed for the creation of the Forest Service. In 1907, the forest reserves were renamed national forests. On July 1, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the formation of the Chelan National Forest from the older Chelan Division of the Washington Forest Reserve. The reserve stretched from the Cascade summit east to the Okanogan River and from the Canadian border southward to the divide between the Chelan and Entiat drainage's; headquarters were in Chelan.

Two years later the Chelan National Forest stretched farther southward with the inclusion of the Entiat watershed, transferred from the Wenatchee National Forest. Then in 1911, that part of the Chelan National Forest lying in Okanogan County was recast as the Okanogan National Forest, with headquarters in Okanogan, while the Chelan National Forest continued to occupy the Lake Chelan and Entiat watersheds. At or around the time of the separation of the two forests, ranger districts were geographical entities with rather flexible boundaries and headquarters' locations (i.e., ranger stations). On the Chelan, the districts were the Entiat, the Sawtooth, and the Lake Chelan, with headquarters at Selico, Deer Point and Chelan, and twenty-five Mile respectively.

Forest boundary changes were again fulfilled in 1925, by proclamation of President Calvin Coolidge dated January 16, 1924, by turning over to the state of Washington for a state forest most of the Chelan National Forest in the Okanogan River drainage, except for Salmon Creek above the reservoir. The transfer essentially absorbed the Sweat Creek and Loomis districts.

In return, the state relinquished title to its unsurveyed school lands lying within national forest boundaries. Fire control for the new state forest fell under the responsibility of the Conconully District Ranger from about 1930 on, and thus fell into the Chelan forest's "protective zone."

Forest restructuring started again in 1942 with the transfer of the 160,359-acre Tonasket Ranger District of the Colville National Forest to the Chelan, in addition to transferring the Colville to Region 1, Missoula, Montana. This change put the Okanogan-Ferry County line as the boundary between the North Pacific Region (now Region 6, Pacific Northwest Region). The next year, on April 23, 1943, the Stehekin district was consolidated with the Chelan district, administered from new offices in Chelan. In 1944, administrative offices of the Conconully district (know formally by then as the Okanogan district) moved into the town of Okanogan.

On January 1, 1955, the Chelan Ranger District was assigned to the Wenatchee National Forest, a loss that included the name of the forest, now known again as the Okanogan National Forest. To avoid confusion, the Okanogan Ranger District was renamed Conconully.

As of 1955, the reformed Okanogan National Forest consisted of the Conconully, Tonasket, Pasayten, and Winthrop ranger districts. On July 3, 1966, the Pasayten district was recombined with the Winthrop district, from which it was carved in 1936. The smokejumper base at the airport in Twisp, known variously since its inception immediately prior to World War II as the "aerial project," became a separate administrative unit called the North Cascades Smokejumper Base.

North Cascade Smokejumper Base Photograph historical files

Okanogan Supervisor's building, housed in the Okanogan Post Office

About 1966, the supervisor's office, housed since December 1940 on the upper floor of the Post Office, moved into the Blackwell Building on Second Avenue in Okanogan, a location across the street from its earliest office in the old National Bank Building. In 1978, the supervisor's office moved to its present location at 1240 South Second Avenue in Okanogan.

Passage of Public Law 90-544, on October 2, 1968, established the 520,000-acre Pasayten Wilderness (previously known as the North Cascades Primitive Area), the North Cascades National Park, Ross Lake National Recreation Area, and Lake Chelan National Recreation Area. This change adjusted the forest boundaries by adding nearly 200,000 acres under administration of the Okanogan National Forest, which included that part of the Mt. Baker National Forest isolated and lying east of the new Ross Lake National Recreation Area to the Okanogan, as well as assigning that part of the Wenatchee separated by Lake Chelan National Recreation Area to the Okanogan, too.

The Lake Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness was designated with the passage of the Washington Wilderness Act of 1984, on lands occupied by the old Chelan Division of the Washington Forest Reserve, now part of both the Okanogan and Wenatchee national forests.

In 1982, the Conconully district was consolidated with the Tonasket district, forest with 3 ranger districts-Tonasket, Twisp, and Winthrop-and the North Cascades Smokejumper Base.

In 1998, the Winthrop and Twisp ranger districts were consolidated and renamed the Methow Valley Ranger District.

USDA Forest Service - Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests
Last Modified:  Wednesday, 16 April 2008 at 12:40:33 EDT