A 1800 Fire Started by the Cowlitz Indian Tribe Tells a Story about Coffin Rock

Native Americans set a huge forest fire in about 1800.

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In about the year 1800, oral tradition holds that Native Americans set a huge forest fire that consumed as much as 250,000 acres in the area between Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, and present-day Centralia.
The fire may have been started by the Cowlitz tribe against the Nisqually tribe or its purpose may have been to bring rain during a year of drought.

Sources:
James K. Agee, Fire Ecology of Pacific Northwest Forests (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993), 57.

By David Wilma, August 01, 2003

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Related Topics: Environment | Northwest Indians |

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