Few plants have played as essential a role in the ecology and economy of Washington as the Douglas fir. Long cherished by Native people, who used every part of the tree, Douglas firs were firewood, tool, building material, and medicine. When European settlers arrived, they too recognized the tree and its wood for its versatility. It would soon fuel a lumber industry that became one of the most productive in the world. From an ecological viewpoint, they are a critical species for healthy forests across the state from the lowlands to the highlands, from backyards to the densest rainforests.
European Encounters
In 1792, Scottish botanist Archibald Menzies (1754-1842) sailed by Vancouver Island on George Vancouver's expedition to the Pacific Northwest. Growing on the island was a forest of trees new to Menzies. As he did throughout the expedition, Menzies gathered specimens of the tree, the first by any European. The tree would become just one of more than 400 species he collected that were new to science including madrone (Arbutus menziesii), devil's club (Oplopanax horridus), and the Chilean monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria aracana). A few weeks after his initial sighting, Menzies wrote while in Puget Sound of being "regaled with a salubrious and vivifying air impregnated with the balsamic fragrance of the surrounding Pinery" ("Menzies' Journal …").
Upon his return to England, Menzies gave specimens of the tree from Vancouver Island to French botanist Aylmer Bourke Lambert (1761-1842). In 1803, Lambert published A Description of the Genus Pinus, in which he made the first known scientific description of the species. Lambert gave it the common name of Nootka Fir, though he placed it in the genus for pine trees, Pinus taxifolia. Unfortunately, he could not describe the cones brought back by Menzies because they had been "unfortunately mislaid" (Lambert, 51).
David Douglas, Namesake
Two decades later, the man now most associated with the trees saw them along the Columbia River. David Douglas (1799-1834) collected specimens along the river in 1825. Born to a stonemason in Scotland in 1799, Douglas began working summers for the gardener at the local manor when he was 11. He stayed for several years before moving to Glasgow in 1820, where he came under the influence of William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865), one of England’s foremost botanists. With Hooker's recommendation, Douglas made his first trip to the United States, to the East Coast, in 1823.
Six months after his return, Douglas departed again, courtesy of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to collect in the Pacific Northwest. During his two years of wandering the region, Douglas calculated that he traveled 7,032 miles, either by foot, by boat, or by horse. In that time, he collected hundreds of species of plants and thousands of specimens, many new to science. Arguably the most impressive trees he saw were those that now honor him. One had a 48-foot circumference and others "even exceed that girth," wrote Douglas ("Journals Kept …"). Unfortunately, the massive tree had been cut down and its stump burned to the ground "to give place to a more useful vegetable, namely potatoes" ("Journals Kept …"). To Douglas, the "remarkably tall, unusually straight trees" were "one of the most striking and truly graceful objects in Nature" ("Journals Kept …").
Between the time of Menzies and Douglas, another well-known visitor to the Pacific Northwest noted the species. In February 1806, while camped at the mouth of the Columbia River, Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) wrote of what he called Fir No. 5 and included a drawing of the tree's unique cone and its bracts (specialized, paper-like structures on seed cones), sometimes described as resembling a mouse's tail or a forked tongue.
Botanists Disagree on a Name
For many decades, the tree confused botanists, who could not agree on either a common or scientific name. The common name of Douglas was first applied to the plants in 1833, in the Penny Cyclopaedia (produced by the wonderfully named Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge). In the book, English botanist John Lindley (1799-1865) first used the name "Douglas fir," as opposed to "Oregon pine" (Abies douglasii). The trees have also been called Douglas spruce, false hemlock, and The Fir, the latter in the lumber trade.
The genus vacillated between Abies (true firs) and Pinus (pine trees). Finally, in 1867, French botanist Elie-Abel Carrière (1818-1896) gave the trees their own genus, Pseudotsuga, a lovely combination of Greek (pseudo meaning false) and Japanese (tsuga meaning hemlock). "I have made it an intermediate genus, Pseudotsuga, due to its affinity with Tsuga on one side, and with Abies on the other" ("Traite General …"). Other scientific names applied over the years include Abies obliquata, Picea douglasii, Pinus douglasii, Pseudotsuga douglasii, Pseudotsuga mucronata, and Pseudotsuga taxifolia. Not until 1950 did the species receive its present specific epithet honoring Archibald Menzies. That name was given by Portuguese botanist João do Amaral Franco (1921-2009), who rediscovered an obscure publication, Mémoires du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle (1825), in which French botanist Charles Mirbel (1776-1854) first applied the name Menzies to the species. This is why the plant is listed scientifically as Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco.
Indigenous Uses
And, of course, long before Europeans arrived the indigenous peoples of the region had names for the tree, which still persist. Ethnobotanist Nancy J. Turner (b. 1947) of the University of Victoria has collected several dozen names. They refer specifically to big (old) trees; young, second-growth trees; and "real trees." Other names connected to the trees refer to terms for preparing the boughs for a sweathouse or bedding; tree bark; and sticky tree. In Puget Sound, the Lushootseed name is čəbidac, often translated as large-tree or a reference to the bark.
Indigenous people, such as members of the Quinault, Cowlitz, Skagit, Lummi, Klallam, and Swinomish nations, used the tree for many purposes. This includes items such as halibut hooks, salmon weirs, harpoon barbs, tool shafts, and fire tongs. Its pitch (or resin) sealed and caulked joints of tools, canoes, and fishhooks. Cowlitz, Quinault, and Skagit people also put the pitch on sores, whereas Swinomish people boiled the needles to make a general-purpose tonic tea. The wood burned well, too.
Pre-History and Geography
Although people have lived in the vicinity of Douglas fir for at least 13,000 years, they may not have encountered the big trees much during the first few thousands years that they lived here. Within the Puget lowland, where the evidence is clearest, Douglas fir could not grow during the last Ice Age because of the several-thousand-foot-thick glacier that extended as far south as Olympia. South of the Puget lowland, the trees would have been a rare part of the flora during this time. Douglas fir started to become more abundant in northern and central Puget Sound, around 11,000 years before present, particularly in open forests and woodlands, but remained a minor component in the South Sound. Not until about 4,500 years before present did they begin to dominate the entire Puget lowland. This corresponds to the establishment of the temperate, wetter climate of the present day.
Douglas fir occurs from British Columbia to Central California. Botanists have placed it in two subspecies. The more coastal is P. menziesii menziesii. P. menziesii glauca grows in discontinuous, generally high-elevation stands throughout the Rocky Mountains down to northern Mexico. The distribution of the two subspecies is the greatest for any species of western trees. The two subspecies share several characteristics. Both have the classic cone with its mouse tail bracts, though coastal cones tend to be larger. Both have leaves, or needles – about an inch long – which are attached on all sides of a twig; they are not prickly or sharp. The inland variety has slightly bluer foliage.
Within Washington, the trees grow from sea level up to about 5,000 feet nearly everywhere on the west side of the Cascade Range, in the Olympic Mountains, and across the Olympic Peninsula. East of the Cascades, they are less frequent though they tend to occur higher in elevation, up to about 6,000 feet. They are generally absent from the Columbia Plateau but occur in the Blue Mountains in Southeastern Washington and the Kettle and Selkirk Mountains of Northeastern Washington.
Symbol of the Northwest
With its towering size, Douglas fir is a critical component of Washington's forests. Understory plants include oceanspray (drier coastal areas), salal and huckleberry (wetter), and Pacific rhododendron (wettest). The trees are often rich in epiphytes such as moss and lichens, which can give the trees a soft green face of verdure. Douglas fir, particularly ones rich in cavities such as dead snags and decaying standing trees, provide critical habitat for northern spotted owls and marbled murrelets. The murrelets are a Washington state endangered species and threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act of 1973. Although they are a bird that feeds and lives in the maritime world, murrelets fly dozens of miles inland to build nests in craggy-topped Douglas fir trees. Northern spotted owls are a state endangered species and threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. They prefer forests with high canopy closure, complex canopy structure with trees of multiple ages, abundant downed wood, and large decaying trees or snags. Another key denizen of Douglas fir forests are northern flying squirrels. Primarily nocturnal, they use cavity nests and build nests on limbs out of moss and lichens.
More so than any other tree, Douglas fir has long symbolized the Pacific Northwest. No matter where one looked, dry and wet sites, slopes and plains, ridges and canyons, and on seashores and in the mountains, the stately trees could be found. The trees even contributed to the coining of Seattle's infamous moniker "Skid Road," a reference to the skidding of massive Douglas firs down to Yesler's mill. Owned by Henry Yesler (1810-1892), the mill was Seattle's first start-up business.
The seemingly inexhaustible trees of yore were truly magnificent. Historian and logger Stewart Holbrook (1893-1964) described them as so tall that it took "two men and a boy to look to the top" (Holbrook, 153). (Holbrook didn’t actually coin that statement; it's been lurking around humor columns in newspapers since at least 1841.) At 250 feet tall, 600-year-old Douglas firs were common. The rare giant could push the upper limits of tree-growing possibilities at 393 feet and 1,400 years of living. Supposedly, one Douglas fir topped out at nearly 400 feet in Seattle's Ravenna Park. (Named the Gen. Robert E. Lee, the tree was probably not that tall.) Others in the park had been dubbed Paderewski, in honor of the famed Polish pianist, Jan Paderewski, and Roosevelt, to honor President Theodore Roosevelt. The latter measured 44 feet in circumference.
Size, though, does not necessarily equate with age. Douglas firs grow fastest in the wet lowlands west of the Cascades in both Oregon and Washington. Some of the oldest specimens, however, occur in New Mexico on lava flows. Several there are around 1,000 years old but would look rather puny compared to trees of similar age in Washington's temperate forests.
Fire Shapes the Forest
As widespread as Douglas firs are, they are not what ecologists would call a climax species, at least on the wet side of the mountains. This means that other trees, such as western and mountain hemlocks and western red cedars often replace, or outcompete them, as a forest ages. In eastern forests, in contrast, Douglas firs are a climax species. What Douglas firs do well on both sides of the Cascades is grow in sites with full sun, which could occur when logging, fire, windstorm, disease, or volcano alters a forest. With prolific seed production, Douglas firs can jump start a young forest, outcompeting other species. Over time, if nothing happens, shade-tolerant trees will begin to shade out the Douglas fir. A state of "nothing happens," though, rarely occurs in nature.
For example, fire is a regular part of the story of forests wherever Douglas firs grow. People long thought that the wet, west side primarily experienced big, stand-replacing fires, on the order of every 300 to 400 years. Ecologists now know that these forests had frequent, low-intensity fires, burning part of a forest to create wide-open spaces where Douglas firs thrive. Over the centuries, the mix of frequent, smaller fires and infrequent massive fires created a mosaic of widely spaced trees, vertical heterogeneity of crowns and canopies, co-existence of the overstory and understory, and growth of shade-tolerant species.
Fire is also an issue in eastern drier mountains, but the fire regime differs. Infrequent, stand-replacing fires do occur, but the low intensity fires would have been almost yearly. One millennium-long record of pollen data found fire so frequent that it was nearly impossible to differentiate the individual fires.
A central reason for these historic fire regimes is cultural burning. Throughout the state's forests, indigenous people have been burning the forest for thousands of years. Fire kept trails clear, prevented the encroachment of unwanted plants in meadows and camp sites, encouraged the growth of desired plants, and helped provide nutrients that resulted in bigger yields. Huckleberry, camas, Garry oak, tule, blackcap raspberry, bracken, yellow glacier lily, serviceberry, and spring beauty are some of the many plants that benefit from regular burning.
Douglas firs have several adaptations that aid in surviving fires. As the trees age and grow, they drop their lower limbs, which tend to be more susceptible to fire because they are small. More important is the bark of the tree. A mature tree can have bark more than a foot thick; these trees often have charred bark, a clear sign that a tree has been burned – perhaps more than once – and survived. In the field, trees 100 to 200 years old typically have hard bark with vertical fissures. Such bark often sports a covering of mosses and crustose (flat and tightly attached) lichens. Older trees will have more flakey bark, described as soft and papery.
With the arrival of European settlers, the historic fire regimes in both wet and drier forests changed. The first change resulted from restrictions placed on Native American people, who could no longer burn as they once had. The second was fire prevention and suppression, illustrated best by Smokey Bear and the United States Forest Service's policy of putting out fires. Such changes have radically altered the ecology and composition of forests. Once there were complicated patchwork mosaics of an old-growth forest. Now, for the most part, the forests have much less temporal, structural, and species diversity. The result is that modern forests are much more susceptible to fire.
"The Sawmill Dream"
Writer William Dietrich called Douglas fir the "sacred center of forest capitalism, the money tree, the sawmill dream" ("Douglas Fir, Then and Now"). In other words, they are the super tree: huge, strong, and able to be used in everything from boat construction to home construction; plywood to dimensional lumber; flagpoles to stretcher poles; bridge supports to railroad ties. Whatever people needed in a wood, Douglas fir fit the niche.
In 1778, 14 years before Menzies collected a specimen, Captain James Cook (1728-1779) was the first European to make use of the trees. He had trees cut down on Vancouver Island in order to use them as ship masts. In 1788, British Captain John Meares (1756-1809) arrived at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island and became the first to harvest the trees for export; these trees went to China. Although we do not have specific records, Douglas fir trees would have been part of the first lumber milled in Puget Sound, at least based on the abundance of Douglas fir in the lowlands. On October 27, 1848, the Puget Sound Milling Company delivered 12,993 board feet of lumber to the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Nisqually. Most of that wood went to Hawaii. As San Francisco began to boom with the Gold Rush, it became the central market for Puget Sound wood.
Within a few years, more than two dozen mills had opened across the Puget Sound. With the mills came town development. Historian Robert E. Ficken (1946-2019) described the setting:
"The sawmill sat next to the wharf on the shorefront. Straggling up the muddy bluff were the buildings of the town: store, manager's house, cottages for married workers, and the hotel for single employees and visitors. Most towns also had a schoolhouse, a church, a saloon, and a field for baseball …" (Ficken, 31).
The mill towns were not known as pleasant places to live. The smoke and soot that mills produced during the milling process often made air quality poor. It was said at the time that one could smell the milling towns long before one arrived at one by boat. The biggest mill was opened by two men from Maine, Andrew Pope (1820-1878) and William Talbot (1819-1907). Their Puget Mill Company mill opened at Port Gamble in September 1853. Within a few years, mills in Kitsap County, which included Port Gamble, were producing 174,000 board feet a day.
The astounding growth of the species in the region's temperate rainforests is what made Douglas fir perfect for the lumber industry. Not only were the trees huge but they were straight, strong, and knot-free. Plus, for the first 150 feet of trunk, they typically lacked many branches, most of which were shed as a tree sought the light from above. Douglas fir has a higher strength-to-weight ratio than steel, shrinks and warps minimally, and has the highest measure of stiffness of any North American softwood, which translates to rigidity and good weight-bearing without bending. And, it is beautiful.
Maritime Uses
In an era of ships powered by the wind, a tree that produced such long and strong wood was ideal for ship spars, or masts. Spars quickly became the premier item coming out of Washington's mills, particularly the ones around Puget Sound. Not only were the masts made of Douglas fir but most of the rest of the ship was too.
The demand for wood led to the design of a new type of ship, the lumber schooner. In particular, the ships lacked top sails and could carry most of their wood cargo on deck. One ship, known as the Oregon Pine, could carry 2.25 million board feet, or enough wood to build 180 three-bedroom houses. Like the lumber mills themselves, many of the ship-building companies were Puget Sound based. So popular was Douglas fir that shipments of the wood exceeded all other species by a ratio of 30 to 1.
Although we do not have records for it, it is safe to assume that a tree ideal for masts would have been ideal for another key maritime need: pilings. Wherever anyone needed to build out into the water, they would have needed pilings, such as for docks, wharves, piers, and foundations to support structures. In Seattle, probably tens to hundreds of thousands of pilings were driven into the sediments along the waterfront to build the city's maritime infrastructure. A similar situation occurred in coastal cities throughout the Pacific Northwest. (One iconic photo of Seattle shows the forest of pilings exposed by the Great Fire of 1889.) Many of those pilings still exist, either buried under subsequent construction or still in the water but serving no use. Because wood piles were susceptible to damaging marine invertebrates such as gribbles and shipworms, or teredo clams, many of the piles were treated with creosote, which has led to a toxic legacy.
Douglas fir also made its way in the other primary means of travel of the late 1800s and early 1900s, as untold millions of railroad cross ties. It was the same old story again: The transport of Douglas fir lumber, which benefited from transcontinental trains, relied on a means of transport that relied on Douglas fir.
Twentieth Century Uses and Developments
With advances in lumber harvesting techniques throughout the first third of the 1900s, the reliance on Douglas fir continued to grow. During World War II, few soldiers would have spent a day without crossing paths with something – including footlockers, bridge pontoons, airplanes, stretchers, huts, barracks – made of the trees. At the same time, in Washington, the state Department of Transportation used the wood for culverts, cribbing, trestles, bridge and trestle decking, bridges, and trusses. In these situations, the wood was typically straight from the tree, but Douglas fir also became central to the plywood industry. Historian Donald Culross Peattie (1898-1964) called plywood "the most revolutionary thing that has happened in the field of structural wood" (Peattie, 116).
Plywood is an engineered wood formed by gluing together veneer, or thin layers of wood, together with the grain of each veneer, or ply, at right angles to its neighbors. The crossed sheets create a resistant, workable wood relatively unable to be split or broken. A sheet of plywood can be screwed or nailed at any location, even at the ends. Making plywood, or veneering, has a long history that dates back to Egypt around 1500 BCE. Not until the 1930s, and the development of better glues, including a waterproof variety in 1934, did it become integral to all aspects of building. According to a 1957 pamphlet by the Douglas Fir Plywood Association, mills in Washington, Oregon, and California produced more than 4.5 billion square feet of plywood annually, which accounted for more than two-thirds of the country's plywood (Facts about Fir Plywood, 9).
Modern Tree Farms
According to Cindy Mitchell of the Washington Forest Protection Association, in 2025 nearly all of the Douglas fir harvested in Washington comes from tree farms, some on their second and third rounds of planting. The wood is still a top choice for construction, plywood, engineered wood products and export markets. As has long happened in the industry, new technologies and new needs have fostered new ways of using Douglas fir. These include:
- Mass Timber (CLT & Glulam): Large, strong wood panels used for high-rise buildings, offering a greener alternative to steel and concrete. These panels are fire-resistant, store carbon, and reduce construction time.
- Engineered Wood (LVL, OSB, Plywood): Strong, efficient building materials made from layered and compressed wood, improving strength and reducing waste.
- Biochar & Carbon Storage: Converting wood waste into biochar, which stores carbon, improves soil health, and supports climate solutions.
- Wood Fiber Innovations: Creating wood-based insulation, biodegradable packaging, and even cellulose textiles as eco-friendly alternatives to plastics and synthetic fibers.
Douglas fir is still widespread across Washington, growing in forests from the lowlands up into the mountains. Most of those trees are either on tree farms or in naturally regenerated second- and third-growth forests. But some massive, original old-growth specimens escaped the saw and axe. These astounding forests are often on public land – in national parks and national forests – and still have the majesty and beauty to awe anyone who sees them. The Douglas fir is still the premier tree of the state.
