Resources

Kah Tai Prairie Historical Context

The late historian and botanist Jerry Gorsline writes about Captain Vancouver and Archibald Menzies' first encounters with the Olympic Peninsula prairies in 1792.

“When they arrived at the northeastern Olympic Peninsula, Vancouver and Menzies both commented on a landscape that included open prairies, which Vancouver described as “extensive lawn[s]…covered with luxuriant grass,,,[and] diversified with an abundance of flowers…that would have puzzled the most ingenious designer of pleasure grounds to have arranged more agreeably.”

The landscape Vancouver observed, which he likened to the manicured landscape of his native England, and could not imagine “had ever been indebted for any of its decorations to the hand of man,” was in fact occupied, and actively managed, by indigenous people. For the native people, these openings in the forested landscape were an important source of specialized plants for food, medicine and technology; provided forage for game, and were maintained by deliberate burning.”

Excerpted from the book Rainshadow by Jerry Gorsline, Jefferson County Historical Society, 1992

“Remembering Jerry Gorsline” by Stephen Grace