Park, Preservation Parties Disagree on how to Save Enchanted Valley Chalet
In their latest draft of a Memorandum of Agreement between parties debating the fate of the endangered Enchanted Valley Chalet, the Olympic National Park proposes to document its history, saving only small samples of the remote building for future museum exhibits. State historic preservation officials advocate saving the entire building.
The park wants parties to agree that the “historic property will be physically lost” to erosion by the East Fork of the Quinault River. These parties currently include the National Park Service, the state Historic Preservation Officer, the Quinault Tribe’s Cultural Resource Specialist and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
“We don’t want a pattern established of writing off historic properties in wilderness areas,” Nicholas Vann, State Historic Architect said Tuesday.
The two-story chalet has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2007.
“The draft plan hasn’t been completed and we are still very actively in the process of modifying and updating it,” stressed park spokeswoman Barb Maynes Wednesday. She declined to be specific. The park will ultimately decide the fate of the structure built by Quinault Valley residents in the 1930s. The river has been growing closer to the chalet for several years. Photographs taken in mid-March show it slicing even deeper under the foundation.
Preservation officials prefer to save the entire building by taking it apart and storing it until funding can be found to reconstruct it elsewhere. Park Superintendent Sarah Creachbaum has estimated this option will cost between $1.5 million and $2 million and it does not appear in the current draft.
The memorandum is still under review by State Historic Preservation Officer Dr. Allyson Brooks, who said Wednesday she is “concerned that the document forecloses incentives to save the building.”
Congressman Derek Kilmer’s staff has been briefed by the park service throughout the process, he said in a meeting with The Daily World Wednesday. He said he doesn’t want the issue of whether or not to save the chalet be made moot by indecision. “I don’t want to see the decision made by default, by failure to act,” he said.
In an April 7 email response to the draft Park Service plan from the state, Vann and Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer Greg Griffith said: “We recommend a different approach that would be more open-ended in terms of outcomes and characterized as a deconstruction/reconstruction plan.” Key to their objections is Stipulation 6 in the draft memorandum, which states: “NPS/OLYM will salvage a representative sample of the historic fabric from the chalet.” This would include: a window and shutter set, a piece of bead-board from the second floor hall and rooms, an original wall log or rafter poles (enough to frame a future exhibit), a newel post from the stairs, a section of stair railing with initials carved in it, a section of stair stringer with initials carved in it and a couple of bricks from the chimney.
Vann and Griffith want to “save as much of the chalet’s building fabric as possible with priority given to as much of its character-defining features as possible, include a plan for how salvaged materials will be stored, protected and transported, and a plan or options for how to include salvaged materials in interpretive displays and to explore reconstruction at a later date and new locations if/when funding can be obtained.”
The chalet is a 13-mile hike from the Graves Creek Trailhead near Lake Quinault. Hikers often use it for overnight shelter and the local Olympians hiking club helped with extensive repairs in the early 1980s.Officials seem to agree that moving the chalet 50 to 100 feet away from the river, a temporary option popular with several citizens, hikers and pack horse groups, is not viable. “That is not the answer. We want to see a long term solution that is not wasting taxpayer dollars and moving (the chalet) to another part of the valley probably would have done that,” Vann said.
Preservation officials also asked if the park has a strategy in place in case the chalet does collapse into the river. “Our concern is not just historic preservation,” said Vann. “It is the liability of the structure damming up … or clogging the river.”
The park is drawing up a “very concise and streamlined environmental assessment on the next action that we are proposing to take” and the public will be allowed comment, Maynes said.
The park has been aware of the river’s threat to the chalet since 2005 and is mandated to care for historic properties. Several civic groups have also donated time and money to preserve the chalet.” … The overall chalet story has very difficult and sticky circumstances because of so many overlapping” concerns: human, legal, cultural, natural and the wilderness character of the area, Maynes said. There are even endangered and threatened species such as the bull trout to consider, she said.
“This is the tension between the ongoing preservation of historic properties and the preservation of wilderness … it should be an easy balance between the two, but it never seems to be an easy situation … for some reason there is always tension and always a problem,” said Dr. Brooks. “I don’t understand why we got into this situation. (We) shouldn’t be in a situation of competing resources when both resources are important.”
There are 40 historical structures within the park’s wilderness section. Park wide, including historic structures outside of wilderness, there are more than 125, Maynes said.
“In accordance with the Olympic National Park General Management Plan (2008), the park has completed routine preservation maintenance on a number of these 40 historic buildings in wilderness. These include routine maintenance (by park staff) on several historic shelters and on the Enchanted Valley Chalet, all since 2009. Work at the Chalet was completed (by park staff) in 2010 — this included a new roof, replacing several logs and painting,” she added in email.
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