Hundreds of acres of forest managed by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources have gone up for sale in Whatcom County over the last year. Trees in Bellingham, plantations near Deming and stands along the Nooksack River have been listed for auction for logging, with funds from each sale going toward DNR beneficiaries like local schools, rural emergency responders and libraries.
Each stand has a unique name that DNR uses to identify the sale, often related to environmental markers, geographic locales, or random objects, songs and hobbies — the names are left up to DNR foresters assigned to the unit.
Along the Middle Fork of the Nooksack River, many of the stands are named in homage to one of the most famous rock bands of the 20th century: Grateful Dead.
“[Naming stands] is one of the joys that our unit foresters have,” said Chris Hankey, DNR’s Baker District Manager in the Northwest Region. “There was a forester who left our agency a number of years ago, but he started creating a Grateful Dead block of trees.”
Several of the Grateful Dead-inspired stands have gone up for auction over the last year, including the recently sold Box of Rain stand and the soon-to-be-sold Brokedown Palace stand. Others, including the Sugaree stand, a 37-acre lot, and the Sugar Magnolia stand, a 25-acre lot, are located near Deming, and both are named after Grateful Dead songs from the ’70s.
“He was a passionate music fan,” Hankey said of the former forester.
