PORT ANGELES — Toni and Norm Wade’s love for the Chickamin Stick Tree Farm is so strong, they want to name a creek on the farm in its honor.
“I love this place. This is my playground,” says Toni Wade, the daughter of a tree farmer, who grew up in the area and played and worked there as a young girl.
In the 1970s, she married Norm on the 40-acre site east of Cameron Road.
The Wades today manage the tree farm founded by Toni’s parents, Harry and Lucie Brown, in the 1940s.
The farm, certified by West Coast Tree Farms in 1959, is believed to be the oldest small-family tree farm on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Unnamed tributary
An unnamed tributary of Dry Creek originates on the property near where the Wades were married, and they are in the process of naming it Chickamin Creek.
The seasonal creek, which is dry this time of year, flows north under U.S. Highway 101 and state Highway 112 east of Reddick Road and connects with Dry Creek near Critchfield Road.
Chickamin is a Chinook reference, meaning “money wood,” says Toni.
“We would like the people of Clallam County to know that we have sent in an application and testified before the Washington State Board on Geographic Names in Olympia to have it named Chickamin Creek,” she said.
The property was selectively logged in the 1980s and the results are evident today: a healthy stand of towering 80-year-old firs, cedars and hemlocks, all in a natural setting that supports flora and fauna.