FORKS — Tours featuring the West End’s roots in trees and the logging industry will kick off Wednesday for the summer season.
The Forks Logging and Mill Tours, held each Wednesday beginning at 9 a.m. from May through September, put the area’s largest crop on center stage.
The three-hour tour leaves from the Forks Visitor Center, 1411 S. Forks Ave.
The tours are free, but donations are accepted to help pay for gas.
Tour guides with industry expertise lead the van tours of up to 12 people.
Sonny Smith, one of this year’s guides, worked in the logging industry for 18 years and has led tours for four.
“We all have been around logging and have worked on trees and seen all of the different changes in the industry,” Smith said.
He said the types of logging, as well as the number of trees harvested, has changed drastically since his nearly two decades in the field, when the industry was in its heyday.
The tours take participants to a log mill to see how wood is cut into usable pieces and to a logging site to see how the logs are transported after they are cut.
The guides also point out the second- and third-growth forests where trees have been replanted and harvested, Smith said.
Smith said he wants to convey what real logging is like.
“A lot of people have seen ‘Ax Men’ on TV,” he said.
“But this is the real thing. It isn’t exactly what it looks like on the show.”
The tours were started nearly two decades ago to help tell visitors what logging was all about and dispel myths, Smith said.
“Our visitors are usually good-humored people,” he said.
“I’ve only had one that ever had a bad attitude.”
Smith said he’s had locals go on the tour as well as people from Europe and the East Coast.
“We also had a whole group of adults from Evergreen [state] College who really enjoyed hearing about what we were doing,” he said.
“They were really receptive.”
For more information or to make a reservation, phone the Forks Chamber of Commerce at 360-374-2531.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladaily news.com.