I love Washington State Parks.

I’ve occasionally disagreed with Parks policies and decisions over the decades. And I may again in the future. But overall, agency personnel do a fantastic job operating and safeguarding our state’s truly magnificent inventory of parkland.

This ran through my mind again Sunday as my cousin and I walked the splendid trail that loops through the ancient forest above Fort Columbia State Park. I was pleased to see the salmon berries and red huckleberries are finally ripening, weeks after they should have been available to feed hungry bears and other wildlife during this cooler-than-usual summer. Only lightly used, this trail is a lasting legacy of standout volunteer Lee Lowenson, who personally labored to restore and maintain it during more than 9,000 hours of unpaid but passionate service to the parks and people of Washington. (See our tribute to him at tinyurl.com/Lee-Lowenson.)

Fort Columbia encompasses thousands of years of rich experience, being one of the centers of Chinook Indian life stretching back into the mysterious mists of forgotten time. I’ve been honored to attend several of the tribe’s First Salmon ceremonies along the park shoreline. This same shore, Chinook Point, is a National Historic Landmark, the site at which American merchant Capt. Robert Gray is supposed to have claimed the Pacific Northwest for the United States in 1792.

The Observer most recently explored one interesting snippet of the park’s elaborate history in a package of coverage by historian Donella Lucero, photographer Luke Whittaker and myself, looking into the Cold War fallout shelter to which Washington’s governor would have been evacuated in the event of a war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. (See tinyurl.com/Fort-Columbia-fallout.)

Perhaps my personal favorite item of Chinook Observer coverage regarding Fort Columbia predates our existing online archive, dating from April 4, 1903. (It and much more is available in our centennial history, “Observing Our Peninsula’s Past,” available for purchase in our office.) While excavating behind the then-new enlisted men’s barracks, workmen uncovered three long-buried crates.

“The center box was full of Indian ornaments … a petrified human hand, small, and evidently that of a woman, showing the fingers and finger nails distinctly. About 25,000 beads, mostly blue cut glass that would string three to the inch.” Other contents included six Mexican dollars, 20 copper coins from the North West Trading Company bearing the image of a beaver, three American half dimes of 1839, three Spanish coins dated 1773, 1774 and 1808, solid silver rings, a small microscope, old rusted firearms, and on and on.

Scarborough Hill adjacent to the fort has long been rumored to be the location of buried treasure, but what the workmen “found other than stated above is known only” to themselves, the Observer’s first editor coyly stated. I hope Scarborough’s gold is still back there somewhere, waiting to become top-of-front-page news one of these days.

In the meantime, another good reason to visit Fort Columbia is to see PAPA’s production of “Letters to Anne of Green Gables,” details here: tinyurl.com/PAPA-Letters. Our talented homegrown theatrical company performs in the fort’s old theater located just above the storied Chinook Point shoreline.

We treasure our role as your memory and your voice. The Chinook Observer is a community project that relies on your ongoing support — thank you!