The main entrance to the Olympic National Park from Port Angeles is by way of Hurricane Ridge Road, but there are also popular entrances to the west along the Elwha River, and past the Sol Duc Hot Springs resort. To the east is a lesser-used access, Deer Park Road, that heads south from Highway 101, eight and a half miles to the park boundary. It continues as an unpaved road nine miles farther, past campgrounds and trails into the back country, to end at the trailhead for the 6000 foot summit of Blue Mountain. The gate at the park border is closed to vehicles during the winter, but if you are spiritually inclined, you can hike up the road a short distance to enter a dimly-lit cathedral with massive trunks of old-growth fir trees reaching high up on every side.
Driving along Deer Park you pass many homes and small farms on one side then the other. The utility poles terminate five miles in, and so do the homes. The road begins to wind up and down over increasingly hilly terrain as it approaches the park. Much of the land here is owned by the state of Washington, managed by the Department of Natural Resources, and licensed for timber harvesting. Logging roads cut off left and right into the trees; most are gated and signed to warn off trespassers. Some lots have moved into private hands but remain zoned as Commercial Forest, which limits, to one residence with outbuildings, the number of structures permitted and their uses. At mile seven of Deer Park Road a gated drive turns left up a hill, and after a quarter mile you come to a piece of land lovingly designated the NorthEast quarter of the SouthEast quarter of Section 9 of Township 29 North, Range 5 West, Washington Meridian, Clallam County, Washington.
A Section is a square one mile on a side, 640 acres, and there are 36 sections in a Township. A section is divided into quarters, and each quarter is further quartered. At one time a 40-acre quarter quarter, or “forty,” was the smallest subdivision sold to individual landowners for farming, but under pressure of increasing development most lots in residential areas have been split and split again so that now a rural residential “estate” is commonly five acres or less. This particular forty has been so split into eight 5-acre parcels but is still owned and being sold as a single lot. Having the lot already split, a troublesome regulatory process, means that a separate residence can be built on each parcel if you desire, greatly enhancing its utility and value.
We give this lot the interim nickname Deer Park Forty, while waiting for its true character to be revealed to us. This is just one of the many properties we have been looking into.
Leave a Reply