Making the Methow Valley ‘home’

Cultivating forever relationships with people and places

SUBMITTED BY THE METHOW CONSERVANCY

It’s easy to fall in love with the Methow Valley. But like any relationship, the bond with this place and the people who inhabit it must be thoughtfully tended.

As people who call this valley home, we can best nurture the place we live by understanding how the choices we make impact other living beings here — plants, animals, and other humans, both past and present.

Home To Myriad Plants And Animalss

For thousands of years, the Methow Valley has been home to a rich diversity of species. It is one of the few remaining places in the lower 48 with almost all of its original predators and prey present. From three species of endangered salmon that spawn in the Methow’s rivers to elusive lynx and wolverines, to the cheery Arrowleaf Balsamroot that brighten hillsides in the spring, this valley is evidence that nature thrives and endures.

The Methow Valley has not stayed wild and pastoral by accident. Most of those who are drawn to the Methow Valley cite its incredible beauty and wildness as a primary attribute. Whether we are recreating in the backcountry or landscaping our own backyards, it’s important to consider our impact on the places the wild critters call home. And in the age of social media, it’s critical to resist over-sharing the secret, secluded spots that these animals depend on.

Home To The First People

Some 13,000 years ago the last of the Missoula floods swept across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge. Glaciologists estimate that the glaciers in the Methow Valley were up to a mile deep. The First People of the Methow Valley have stories about the great flood and its impacts.

For hundreds of generations, the Methow Valley has been the home of the Methow People: sp aƛmul əxʷəxʷ (“blunt hills around a low valley”). When the first white settlers arrived in the Methow Valley in the late 1800s, the area was part of the Moses-Columbia Reservation, formed in 1879.

When the Moses-Columbia Reservation was dissolved in 1884, most of the Methow People were forcibly relocated to the area east and south of present-day Omak, becoming one of the 12 tribes of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. Others in this diaspora refused to enter the reservations and simply stayed or dispersed in the region. Even today, many Methow Tribal families maintain a consistent presence in this valley.

We are grateful for the Methow People’s careful stewarding of this land and hope to learn from their example. But there is still much to be done to ensure Methow Descendants feel welcomed on their homeland. By learning more about their history and presence today you can help honor this valley as their home.

Home To Generations Of Residents And Visitors

Prior to acquiring horses, the Methow People lived in the valley year-round, overwintering in bermed pit houses and moving to teepees in seasonal camps in the warmer months. Once they acquired horses in the 1700s, most Indigenous People spent winters in warmer areas.

In the late 1800s, as the Methow People lost access to their ancestral territory under an agreement that was negotiated without their consent, settlers, trappers, fur traders, loggers, farmers, ranchers, and miners began homesteading throughout the Methow Valley. For much of the 20th century, the Methow Valley remained hard to reach and was, thus, sparsely inhabited and lightly visited. With the opening of the North Cascades Highway in 1972, however, the Methow Valley became connected to the western side of the state, allowing a wider swath of tourists to visit — and fall in love with — the Methow Valley.

Home To Change

Over the past 40 years, dozens of mountain towns around the American West were “discovered,” changing seemingly overnight from know-your-neighbor cozy communities to places where the local work force could no longer afford to live. Townhouses bloomed on hillsides around town centers; workers began to bus in from neighboring communities.

Although the Methow Valley has seen unprecedented growth in the past five years — with housing prices up more than 50% — it is still possible to chart a course for the future that includes local workers being able to continue to afford to live in the valley.

Most mountain communities like ours don’t get the opportunity to prioritize housing that is affordable for people who live and work locally. The Methow Valley does.

And Housing

Housing that is affordable so that people who live and work in the Methow Valley can stay is vital to the Methow Conservancy’s work. As a conservation organization, we are dedicated to inspiring people to care for the land of the Methow Valley and we think this happens most effectively when people have the opportunity to form profound connections with places by living in them and becoming familiar with their rhythms and attributes.

We believe that the Methow Valley can forge an innovative path forward for rural mountain towns by embracing not only the valley’s wildlife habitat, agricultural legacy, and recreational values, but also its people and the importance of community members being able to live where they work.

The Methow Conservancy’s efforts to sustain a rural way of life have always supported clustering development close to towns. Promoting necessary growth in areas where development already exists

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Building for the future

Efforts to address the Methow Valley’s pressing housing issue include:

• The Housing Solutions Network, a consortium of 12 organizations, focuses on affordable housing concerns and solutions in the valley.

• The Methow Housing Trust’s construction of 26 permanently affordable homes, with another 48 to be completed by 2030, have allowed educators, servers, bakers, health care providers and retail workers to become homeowners (www.methowhousingtrust.org).

• The Okanogan Housing Authority’s plans to build 22 units of multi-family housing near Winthrop addresses low-income housing needs (www. okanoganhousing.org).

• Methow at Home’s partnership with Silvernest matches homeowners with tenants

— rather than dispersing it widely across a landscape — preserves desired open spaces and scenic views in the surrounding environments, such as riparian zones, agricultural fields.

(methowathome.clubexpress.com).

• Jamie’s Place Adult Family Home received a Game Changer Grant from the Methow Valley Fund to purchase two tiny homes to provide caregiver lodging (jamiesplace.org).

• Some residents are building an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) to rent to a local resident; others have converted their ADUs from nightly rentals to long-term rentals. Still others have restructured their homes to provide a long-term rental space to locals.

• The Methow Conservancy encourages clustering residential development near towns. Conservation easements held by the Methow Conservancy preserve the Methow Valley’s rural landscape by protecting important wildlife habitat, by supporting its agricultural heritage, and by preserving opens spaces, scenic views and public access.

The Methow Valley economy and our health as a community depend on housing availability and affordability. When communities are not inhabited by the people who work in them, the essential character of those communities — the intimacy and neighborly atmosphere that make them so unique and special — begins to erode. Our community is strongest when it is anchored by

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a strong local work force, comprised of people who are invested and engaged in the economic, social and environmental well-being of the Methow Valley.

The Methow Conservancy is an active participant in seeking solutions to mitigate the housing crisis in the Methow Valley — and our current endeavor to purchase the land known as Sunny M Ranch provides an opportunity to make our vision a reality.

Our expertise is in land conservation, not neighborhood development, so we intend to best leverage our resources and experience by making a piece of land near the Town of Winthrop available for a small neighborhood, which will be developed by others into housing that will be affordable for people who work in the Methow Valley.

The type and mix of housing will be informed by the Winthrop and Twisp Housing Action Plans, the availability of water, infrastructure costs, public comment, the interested partners, and other factors.

It is important to note that we recognize that we can’t solve all the housing problems in the Methow Valley with the Sunny M property. We see this land as helping to play a role in the larger efforts to address the Methow Valley’s pressing housing issue. (To learn more about this effort, visit methowconservancy.org/ sunnym).

Help Safeguard Our Home

Although it sometimes feels like paradise, the truth is, life in the Methow Valley is not a fairy tale. Economic and environmental struggles are real here. You can help sustain the Methow Valley’s rural character and the Methow way of life, but you need to lean into it. Here are a few ways you can engage with, learn about, and invest in our shared home and its history:

• Learn about the First People who made the Methow Valley their home (Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, www.colvilletribes.com).

• Visit the Methow Valley

Interpretive Center in Twisp to learn more about the human and natural history of the Methow Valley. (www.methowvalleyinterpretivecenter.com).

• Tour Homestream Park in Winthrop, which was created to honor the rivers and fish of the Methow Valley and the Native people, both past and present, who have called this place home for thousands of years (www.homestreampark. com).

• Read about Hummingbird (x ʷnámx ʷnam), which is 328 acres of ancestral land that was recently returned to the Methow People (methowconservancy.org/news/ entry/faq_land_justice).

• Visit the Shafer Museum in Winthrop to learn more about the Methow Valley from the 1880s to the 1940s (www.shafermuseum. org).

• Read more about the Methow Valley’s economy in the TwispWorks Economic Study (www. twispworks.org).

• Get familiar with the Methow Conservancy’s State of the Methow data collection project (methowconservancy.org/ state-of-the-methow).

• Protect our dark skies by using only the lighting you need, aiming lights down, and using timers and/ or motion sensors (www.methowdarksky.org).

• Learn about all of the Methow Valley’s nonprofits and find one (or more) that inspire you (www.volunteermethow.org).

• The Methow Conservancy’s new Good Neighbor Handbook (www.methowconservancy.org/ goodneighbor) shares an ethic about living thoughtfully with wildlife, with neighbors, and with the community.

The Methow Valley has a long history of coming together in innovative and sincere ways to overcome shared challenges and struggles. We, as a community, participate, learn, think deeply, and collaborate. We know that loving a place means taking action to care for it and each other. We hope you will enjoy digging in and learning more about the plants, animals, and people who also call this valley home. Welcome!

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