Tacoma Creek Area

In the early 1920s, the Tacoma Creek area was home to a thriving timber industry. The Diamond Match Company bought timber from many of the area settlers, and, in 1920, built a large sawmill, which produced an average of “45,000 board feet per shift.” A flume—which connected logging operations at Tacoma Creek with Flume Camp five miles away—solved the transportation challenge of getting logs from the forest to the mill. Logging in this area, however, was short-lived. By 1925, Diamond had closed its operation in the Tacoma Creek area because most of the local timber had been logged. The following year, a smaller sawmill was in operation in the area, but it never matched Diamond’s output or level of employment.

In 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established a camp at the old Flume Camp but abandoned it by 1936. The camp then became a Resettlement Project camp for a short time, serving as a temporary home for people in transition to their new farms. Through this project, the government bought poorly producing farms and relocated owners to more productive farmland. Today, this area of Tacoma Creek is within the Colville National Forest.

Since 1966, the Air Force has used Flume Camp and the surrounding area as a survival camp. The 336th Training Group at Fairchild Air Force Base uses the site as its base of operations for the U.S. Air Force’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program. As part of their training, airmen spend several days in the forests around the old Flume Camp area learning survival skills such as navigation, foraging/food preparation, and “evasion travel and camouflage techniques.”