The beginning of the Kitsap Forest Theater was the 1916 acquistion of 125 acres on which the theater now stands.
Here is the official announcement of the acquisition from the January 1916 Mountaineer Bulletin.
OUR NEW RHODODENDRON PARK
The Mountaineers now have another splendid worth-while activity. It is a permanent rhododendron park. The Board of Trustees at a recent special meeting authorized the purchase of seventy-four acres for park purposes and the negotiations are practically complete. The price asked some three years ago was $25 an acre. We are paying $5 per acre.
The property lies in Kitsap County to the west of Dyes Inlet on the southerly slopes of a flat timbered ridge two miles southwest of Chico and six miles north of Charleston. It is one-quarter of a mile wide by nearly one-half a mile long. It is an abandoned ranch and is technically described as the north half of the northwest quarter of section seven, township twenty-four north, range one east Willamette meridian.
On the place is a log cabin of two stories and also a small barn. The roofs of both are in good condition and the buildings with some minor repairs will be usable and suitable for week-end trips. The well goes dry in the summer and provision will have to be made for a water supply.
The few neighboring property owners are glad to have The Mountaineers come in. Best of all Hidden Ranch joins us on the south. Hither we have journeyed many times and now here amid cherished memories we are to have a natural park home.
From the high part of the tract just above the cabin is a good view of the bold east front of the Olympics. The Cascades, Mount Rainier and Mount Adams can also be seen together with glimpses of the Sound. The cabin outlook is limited though inviting to a lover of the secluded. There is a considerable difference in elevation between the lowest and the highest points on the place and the rough and irregular configuration make it very well suited for a natural park. Very little trail work will be needed to make it all accessible.
Adjoining the tract the wildest of woods and the most unexpected hidden glens are at hand for short and tasty scrambles. Wildcat and Kitsap lakes and the salt "chuck" are nearby on beautiful, unfrequented trails. Mount Baldy is in sight, ever-beckoning for a day's trip to the summit from which is a singularly magnificent view over Hood Canal to the up-standing Olympics.
The place has evergreen huckleberry bushes a-plenty and throughout the entire year we shall have either the berries or the white and pink-tinted blossoms. The rich brown stemmed manzanita abounds and the creeping kinnikinnick together with a rare hybrid of the two. Ceanothus has sprung up in rich profusion in what was once the cleared land. White pine and lodge pole pine grow side by side. Fir and hemlock and alder and madrona are there. The lesser plant life is abundant-ferns, brakes, mosses, fungi, etc. Altogether the native forest and plant life is unusual. Bird life in winter is especially plentiful and varied owing to the berry food obtain-able. Deer, bear, and mountain beaver have left their tracks and trails as well as smaller and less shy animals.
The southwest corner of the property touches the splashing, moss-banked, fern-fringed brook from Wildcat lake and has a few old-time Douglas fir monarchs, two hundred and fifty feet high. Just inside the western boundary are a series of wee, amphitheatre-like valleys delightfully wooded and rhododendron-splashed in which one can be a million miles from soul-callousing work, relax and soften in heart, inhale the woods' spirit and be remade by the wild and only natural flavor of life-all of which spells deep peace.
But over and above all its other attractions the place is per-eminently adapted for a rhododendron park. It lies in the sun-and-rain belt where our state flower grows so luxuriantly and so wondrously beautiful. A considerable part of the old ranch has been simply slashed over and up through the tangle of down-lying stems and branches have grown splendid vigorous clumps of rhododendron, while in some more open spaces the bushes are shapely and symmetrical. Green is their foliage throughout the year and in the spring time they are covered with large clusters of daintily tinted flowers of rare delight. In the undisturbed second growth forest, the bushes struggle upward with irregular crooked stems to get the light and ofttime end in a single bouquet-burst of delicate pink glory twenty-five feet from mother earth. They grow all over the tract in the darkling as well as the clearer spaces and there may they be protected throughout the years to come.
CHAS. ALBERTSON.