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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Securing The Ridge Several Area Groups Want To Buy The Big Rock Land To Keep It Free Of Development And Ensure Public Access

Bruce Krasnow Staff writer

Peer over one shoulder and the view from Big Rock Ridge is of the densely populated Spokane Valley, Mount Spokane, Mica Peak, Kaiser’s Trentwood plant and acre upon acre of housing.

But over the other shoulder, ahhhh. The Palouse hills, large farms and Steptoe Butte on the far horizon.

The contrast is geological, too. The area, known as the Rocks of Sharon Natural Area, elevation 3,800 feet, has been a buffer, protecting the rich top soil of the Palouse from the great glacial floods.

Water still plays a part in the ridge, which acts as a magnet for rainfall. The Big Rock area gets more precipitation than elsewhere in the Spokane area, which is one reason that such trees as the Pacific yew, western hemlock and grand fir, typically associated with wetter environments grow here.

With its climatic differences, old mining tunnels, underground creeks, and haystack rock structures - some of which form natural tunnels - the Big Rock area is a mix of Stonehenge, the Oregon Coast and Mount Rainer. Yet, it’s a stone’s throw from the intersection of Sprague and Argonne, a jog from the Ponderosa neighborhood.

Conservationists, government planners and citizen activists are now implementing plans to secure the future of the ridge and the adjacent land conservationists have dubbed the Rocks of Sharon Natural Area, named after the old railroad town of Sharon on its southern slope.

Some 700 acres of Big Rock Ridge and adjacent land has been identified as a top priority for purchase by Spokane County with money from the Conservation Futures Tax, which may go to a public vote this fall.

The cost of buying that property may be $1 million, with perhaps half of that coming from the state. Already, the Dishman Hills Association has seen the importance of the area and gone forward with its own purchase.

The association pledged to pay $225,000 over 10 years for 170 acres of the natural area, some of which was burned by the 1991 firestorm and then selectively logged. The association could not have afforded the land if its owners had not been able to remove some of the timber first.

The Dishman Hills Association hopes to join Big Rock with the Dishman Hills Natural Area five miles away via a natural corridor for hiking and horseback riding. Big Rock is part of that same ridge and comprises what ecologists think is a wildlife corridor from the Turnbull Natural Wildlife Refuge to Liberty Lake Park and the Coeur d’Alene basin.

The dream of groups behind the effort is to ensure public access to the land by consolidating it into public ownership.

If successful, the effort will require cooperation between several groups, state and county government and Spokane County voters, who will have a say this fall on a property tax levy earmarked for public land purchases.

Already the Dishman Hills Association, the Sierra Club, Spokane Native Plant Society, the Audubon Society and Spokane Mountaineers, as well as Ponderosa-area homeowners have joined to mobilize support for Big Rock.

Mike Hamilton, Dishman Hills Association president, said the conservation tax, which costs the owner of a $100,000 home $6 a year, is the best way to guarantee areas such as Big Rock remain open to the public.

“Oldtimers say, ‘Why do you want to make this a natural area? It is, it has been for years,”’ Hamilton said. “No, it won’t be for much longer.”

Hamilton said he has led tours of the natural area 20 times in the last nine months in an effort to show people what it has to offer.

Among those impressed are state parks officials from Olympia. Big Rock is one of the few sites east of the Cascades to ever gain state matching money for urban wildlife habitat preservation.

The state has pledged $500,000 of matching money toward the Big Rock purchase if the county and private donors come up with the other half.

Wyn Birkenthal, county parks director, said the fund has traditionally been used to buy Puget Sound waterfront, which like Big Rock, is close to population centers and threatened by development.

“The money doesn’t often make its way east of the Cascades,” said Birkenthal, “I wouldn’t count on winning the lottery again.”

Hamilton said state officials and environmental groups from Western Washington are impressed that Spokane doesn’t rely solely on government money to buy land such as Dishman Hills Natural Area, which includes parcels of land owned by the county, the state Department of Natural Resources and the private Dishman Hills Association. All parties owning land in the natural area have agreed to joint planning and management.

“No place else in the entire state is there a coalition between citizens and government to pull this off,” Hamilton said. “No place else is it happening.”

For its part, the Dishman Hills Association is paying $6,467 every three months for its purchase of the 170-acre Big Rock property. It’s a constant fundraising job, but one the association’s members believe Spokane is ready for - especially after hikers see the terrain.

Only by seeing the land are people likely to support the government getting into such ventures as land purchases, Hamilton maintains.

Hamilton compares the Conservation Futures Tax to city founders who set aside land for urban parks. No one today doubts the wisdom of that and Spokane’s parks are considered one of its finest amenities.

“We have parks but we don’t have these,” said Hamilton pointing out the view from Big Rock ridge.

“The cost of running a natural area is significantly lower” than maintaining urban parks, he said. “In fact, the less you do the better.”

Beth Harper, a Valley resident who leads Sierra Club outings, said she recently bought a home and is much more aware of her property tax bills and how tax money is spent.

“I don’t mind forking over money for this,” she said. “I’m not wealthy. I clean for a living. But this is worth it,” said Harper as she hiked down a slope along Iller Creek, which flows into Chester Creek along DishmanMica Road.

Part of the appeal of the Big Rock area is that it’s so huge that trails can be opened to horses, hikers and campers without people falling over each other, as they sometimes do at places like Riverside State Park.

The most popular access to the area is from the Valley at the end of Holman Road in the Ponderosa neighborhood. From there, hiking trails lead to Big Rock Ridge.

Much of the top of Big Rock Ridge is owned by radio and television stations that have antennas or microwave towers there. Owners have not objected to use of the land by responsible hikers.

It’s something Hamilton has been doing a lot lately.

“Part of the appeal of the ridge its that it’s just a great place to come up and be,” he said.