If you know of Coal Creek at all, you probably think of its namesake road running up a beautiful narrow valley east of Chehalis. The creek itself is a silent partner, little known as it slips shyly through a narrow tunnel under National Avenue, in between office and retail buildings, then marches meekly north, single-file, through a forest of mostly dead trees west of Yard Birds.
While it might occasionally join with its more serpentine cousins in rising like a cobra during floods, for the most part, Coal Creek is a forgotten garter snake sliding through the reed canary grass. Ignored and unloved, it stays out of sight — asking for nothing and receiving exactly that.
But now the time has come for this little creek that time forgot.
Bob Russell, an enthusiastic Chehalis businessman who spent his career working in paper mills, has turned his attention to restoring Coal Creek and the wetlands around it. He has a vision to transform this ditched creek on 60-some acres of city-owned land.
Russell (who has become a good friend of mine through shared work on a few other projects in recent years) wants to kindle a shared vision to create an eco-park in this otherwise unusable property. He sees it as a place where salmon and animals can flourish, where people can hike and connect with nature, and where out-of-towners might even come to visit.
“We envision a community amenity consisting of beautiful, lush wetlands with public access trails along the lowlands of Lewis County’s Coal Creek,” Russell told the Chehalis City Council during a presentation last month. “With community support and involvement, this area can be transformed to provide a healthy corridor for salmon through productive farmland, while holding back flood waters and creating an attractive public space.”
Russell is indeed a man of vision — and he has the special skill of leading the hard work that can make them come true.
I got to know him seven years ago when he showed up at an organizational get-together for the George Washington Bicentennial project. He stood up when we went around the room, introduced himself, and told us something to the effect of, “I don’t really do meetings, but if you have any work to do, I’ll be there.”
He followed through on that in spades. He was a workhorse to clean up and restore Washington Lawn Cemetery, the pioneer graveyard where the town’s founders and their families are buried. If you visit today, you’ll see beautiful concrete brickwork around Washington’s grave and an ornate wrought iron entry gate, all organized and project managed by Russell.
Now, the man who doesn’t like meetings is the one organizing a planning session for this Coal Creek restoration project.
This coming Monday, Jan. 29, we’ll be at the Twin Cities Senior Center at 5 p.m. (Yes, I’ll be there. I love the idea of the project, for one, and secondly, Russell is not the kind of guy you can say no to very easily. His enthusiasm is just too contagious.)
The senior center is just a stone’s throw from the project area. In fact, a levee runs along the back of the senior center property to protect it and the fairgrounds from flooding on Salzer Creek. You can walk along the levee and see where Coal Creek meets up with Salzer. Both were channelized long ago, turned into little more than drainage ditches. Still, salmon nose their way up these industrialized waterways. Russell, with the future-mind sight of a true visionary, can see them as re-wilded places that are friendly for salmon and inspiring for people.
That’s quite a change from the overgrown pastures choked with invasive grasses that you see today.
To me, this project has the potential to be much like the George Washington Bicentennial. That special event brought together a really great group of people with complementary interests and strengths. After 18 months of work, we had some wonderful community events, a new bronze statue, Centralia College scholarships and much more.
This Coal Creek project will probably take longer, but its potential to change the landscape has a matching expansive vastness.
I’m excited to get in on the ground floor as we take an overlooked swamp and turn it into a natural resource for salmon and people.
I think the forgotten Coal Creek of Chehalis is about to become a diamond.
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Creek enthusiast Brian Mittge can be reached at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
