Brightwater Center

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Forks — Thumbnail History (historylink.org) Forks, a small town in the northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula in an area called the West End, is one of three incorporated cities in Clallam County. It sits within traditional Quileute Indian land on a large prairie surrounded by forestland, an hour’s drive west from its largest neighbor, Port Angeles. Non-Indian settlers arrived in the late 1870s, and the town grew slowly from a remote collection of farming homesteads into a booming timber town by the 1970s, given its proximity to thousands of acres of colossal old growth forests nurtured by the area’s average rainfall of 120-plus inches a year. Timber-harvest decline and controversy over protection of wildlife habitat deeply affected the town during the 1980s and 1990s, causing anger and high unemployment. The town’s makeup has shifted from its Scandinavian-settler origins, and it has the highest Hispanic population in the Clallam County in 2007. Forks is surrounded by land zoned as commercial forest, and timber remains a large industry. Government, education, and health care are also large employers, and the town attracts tourists by taking advantage of its logging history and its proximity to rain forests, rivers, and ocean beaches.

Brightwater Center (wta.org) The Brightwater Treatment Plant, which treats waste and storm waters for King County, opened in 2011. To ensure that the treatment plant would be an asset to its host community, the campus was designed to include an Environmental Education and Community Center and a 70-acre public open space with walking trails and natural wetland habitat. The Brightwater Center’s three miles of trails yield a fascinating, family-friendly hiking experience through wetlands and woodlands that serve as a protected enclave for native wildlife and plant species.