Tourism at Mount St. Helens hasn't panned out.  I've been involved with this industry from the start.  As a kid, my sister and I hammered together a few boards,  painted "volcano stand" on them, and converted our bus shed into a "business" in the summer of 1980.  We sold baggies of ash, copies of family eruption photos, and (of course) lemonaid.  By the next year, the adults had taken over, and 19 Mile House was born.  Over the years, I've seen millions of tax dollars pour into tourism facilities. A new highway 504 was dotted with FIVE visitor centers!  But these monsterous buildings seem to miss the mark. Cowlitz County's tax-funded visitor center has been sold to a church group.  The Forest Service built three of these centers, but today operates only one, at Johnston Ridge.  People drive up, watch the movie, and then leave, without sustaining any real long-term economic activity.  All the while I've been traveling the Western USA looking at other areas and comparing what they have done--right or wrong--with Mount St. Helens.  

Here's what I have learned: 

#1 People want REAL experiences.  Pavement recreation won't do.  Car rides and visitor centers and video screens are not a real experience.  Yes, fly-by tourists will drive up, spend an hour, and turn around.  But nobody stays and plays...and pays.  People want to do real activities: camping, lodging, hiking, boating, skiing, sledding, biking, horseback riding, kayaking, fishing, hunting, birding, climbing, berry picking, dining, swimming, backpacking.  

#2  Campgrounds.   The biggest whiff at Mount St. Helens is lack of camping.   The Monument intentionally didn't provide any campgrounds, and instead relied on private business for camping.  The leadership made this decision despite the fact that the Monument Act specifically instructs the Forest Service to provide campgrounds.  I've been to nearly all the National Parks Units in the West and they all have some sort of camping.  Even Craters of the Moon, in a bleak, hot, black lava bed, has carved out camping spots.  

#3 Year-round activities.  The successful outdoor recreation areas find ways to bring in people year round.  Ski resorts offer mountain biking and chairlift rides in the summer, Spring flowers and bird arrivals are promoted.  Fall colors and bugling bulls attract a wide variety of visitors.  Fortunately, Mount St. Helens has the ability to capitalize on the changing seasons.  Instead, along the Spirit Lake Highway, the Forest Service has made winter activities illegal!  No sledding, No snow play. No ski trails. No snowmobiles. No. No. No.  No wonder there are no visitors. 

#4  Access.  Last but not least, access is key.  Access to trails, access to lakes, access to and through the area.  Mount St. Helens in the opposite of accessible; it is locked up and closed off, all going against it own Management Plan.  The area is regulated to death, and people are turned off by all the threatening signs.  They simply feel unwelcome with threats of $100 fines for stepping off the trail around every bend.**  Here's the kicker, it was never supposed to be that way.  The 1985 Monument Management Plan is much more reasonable than what is on-the-ground today.  It calls for a trail along the shore of Spirit Lake for fishing, has a snowpark at Coldwater Lake, a dock and camping spot at the end of the lake, a trail to connect north and south areas, and easements to trailheads if they are ever blocked by private landowners (which they are now).  Currently, there are entire regions of the Monument that are locked behind private gates with trailheads only usable by people who purchase $350 private Weyerhaeuser permits.  

A Brighter Future?  Currently, the Mount St. Helens Institute, a non-profit that has taken over management of the old Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center, is proposing some of these very items for the site, including overnight lodging and a campground.  Although this is in the future, any move to add real experiences can only help the region.  I, however, would suggest the Forest Service spend a minimum amount on securing access to existing trailheads, which would broadly expand things to do, with very minimum of investment.  Beyond that, a designated winter snowplay area is also an inexpensive and key addition.

**I'm still investigating but it appears the decades of "administrative closure" were actually illegal (no kidding!) As of July, 2022,  the Monument has not renewed its administrative closures on much of the Monument, including all the land along the Spirit Lake Highway. This may be true, but I haven't seen any $100 fine signs come down yet.  

So now it is time to jump into some bit of controversy concerning access to our public lands in the Toutle Valley (and around the state).  I've already talked about "official" access routes to various parcels of state and federal land in the valley, but, behind the scenes, I have been pushing government agencies and elected officials about a more hidden layer of access: road easements.  It turns out that many of the gated roads that you might run into that are posted by Weyerhaeuser may have state easements on them that go to public land.  These roads are currently posted with signs that claim that a Weyerhaeuser permit is required for all recreational access, even if these roads go to state land.  In fact, the gate nearest the sediment dam (below) blocks a road with TWO government easements on it, both of which could allow public access to adjacent public land.  Weyerhaeuser owns the land on the right side of the road.  Now, keep in mind, these easements do not let folks walk or hunt or hike on private land, they only allow access through on certain roads leading to public land. 

Most of these easements are between timber companies and the state Department of Natural Resources.  Many were written in the 1960's and 1970's when both entities where logging new territory, and they needed to pass each other's lands.  One relavent easement, the Green River Easement, was written in October of 1967 and has no restrictions on how the road can be used. The easement simply provides access to and from lands of the parties.  The DNR says that public use of these easements is a "grey" area, but a closer look at the history shows that broadly worded easements were written this way in response to pro-recreation laws that passed the Washington legislature in mid-1967.  Unfortunately, easements written before mid-1967 often have restrictive language that limits use to "land management and administrative activities".

What this means for the Toutle Valley:  Right now access to our state lands is mostly at the whim of Weyerhaeuser.  The WDFW does have and "administrative-type" easement on the 3100 road, but the public directly isn't covered by that.  If the DNR could confirm that the public could at least walk or bicycle on roads covered under the Green River Easement, access routes would open up to the Winston Block of DNR land (16,000 acres just north of Kid Valley), the 8,000-acre Wildlife Area would have three or four additional access routes, and the 35,000-acre Toutle State Forest could be accessed from Sediment Dam Road. 

It's complicated, but right now is the time to contact your legislator, the heads of the DNR, and WDFW and to encourage them to confirm that the public may used these easement routes to access state land.