Photo The price of cedar roofing shakes has been skyrocketing in recent years, and that was before the Trump administration this week imposed a new tariff of 25 percent on many goods imported from Canada, including lumber. For one ambitious 16-year-old Vancouver Boy Scout and the Washington State Parks Foundation, that soaring price is also the price of saving a signature, local chapter in American history. “I set out to find a project that would really make a difference,” Isaac Hamann said. “This is a really important part of our history, and I don’t want to see it lost to time.” To earn his Eagle Scout badge, Hamann has been working to raise $21,000 to restore the disintegrating roof of a Depression-era kitchen shelter at Beacon Rock State Park.

If you’ve ever hiked Hamilton Mountain, which is just uphill from Beacon Rock itself, you’ve passed this humble structure on your way. You may have even rested and refreshed inside, and noticed how worn the roof is. “You can see the roof starting to cave in and the supports starting to break,” Hamann said. The last time he visited, there were termites, he added. Everything below the roof remains functional and available to the public, said Evan Seidl, the local area manager for Washington State Parks. “It’s a busy structure at one of our busiest trailheads. We see quite a bit of use of that facility in summer,” Seidl said. “It’s got water. It’s got power. The historic camp stoves are still functional.”

There aren’t many photos of Civilian Conservation Corps men working at the kitchen shelter, but these snapshots of road building and a view of CCC Camp Beacon Rock from the Beacon Rock Trail were taken in 1935 and 1936. (Contributed by Washington State Parks) Photo Hamann has been racing since last year to raise $21,000 in donations by the end of this month. He based his estimate on a quote he received for Canadian old-growth cedar shake prices. If that much can be raised, it may be possible for the work to get done as soon as this summer. The Oregon-based Northwest Youth Corps is interested in taking on the job, Hamann said. This week, Hamann heard from his Canadian supplier that new tariffs likely will hike the price of materials well beyond $21,000. Just as Hamann was within a few thousand dollars of his goal, the goalposts may have been moved by the Trump administration’s tariffs. Why must it be Canadian cedar? It doesn’t have to be, said Alex McMurry, the historic preservation planner for Washington State Parks. But even with additional tariffs, Canadian cedar still may still turn out to be more affordable than domestic cedar. It’s still too soon to say whether the project’s cost will rise, and by how much. State Parks officials this week said they remain optimistic about accomplishing the project within the original budget. They’ll make up the price difference if they must, they said.

Hamann remains undaunted, he said Monday. “It’s a hit to my positivity but this project has to happen,” he said. “I have to succeed, and that’s that.” John Floberg, executive director of the Washington State Parks Foundation, said Hamann’s determination has him wondering whether resourceful, energetic Scouts could be the key to saving other aging structures in Washington parks. There are 700 such structures, he said, and many are nearly a century old. Through April 30, the foundation has even promised $2,500 in matching funds for every dollar donated to Hamann’s effort, and posted his video about the project on its homepage. “He’s an assertive guy,” Floberg said. “Most other Eagle Scout projects are a lot less ambitious, like a bench or something. He wanted to do this, which is huge, so bless him for it.”

Living history The Beacon Rock kitchen shelter may not look like much, but it traces back to a period of crisis and can-do optimism in American history. “It’s not necessarily a unique building, but it’s a historically important building,” Seidl said. “Like a lot of the structures at Beacon Rock, it was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps … and it’s really capturing that time period and the struggle a lot of young Americans went through.” To help capture that troubled era even more, a cadre of historical CCC re-enactors called the Roosevelt’s Tree Army Living History Group will spend the whole day April 19 at the Beacon Rock picnic shelter. Dressed in period clothing, they will use period tools to reenact the work of CCC laborers. They will also answer visitor questions. It’s their second recent visit to the site, Seidl said. All this activity at Beacon Rock — Hamann’s shelter-rescue project and the Tree Army living-history visit — coincides with plans to provide better visitor experiences and more historical education at the site. Within the next few years, the Hamilton trailhead area will be redeveloped with accessible parking, a paved walkway and an information kiosk that describes the site’s history, Seidl said.

There aren't many photos of Civilian Conservation Corps men working at the kitchen shelter, but this snapshot of road building at Beacon Rock was taken in 1935 or 1936. (Contributed by Washington State Parks) Photo “We want to turn it into a CCC interpretive plaza,” he said. “Isaac’s roof project ties into that beautifully.” The shelter roof was last replaced in the 1990s, Seidl said. Even though it’s made of the sturdiest water-resistant local material — old-growth cedar — decades of weather inevitably takes its toll. Seidl said shelters and other park structures were built according to standard CCC plans, so you might well see an identical shelter elsewhere in Washington, Oregon or Idaho. What’s unique about local ones, he said, is the local materials used to build them. “It was wood from Beacon Rock and stone from Beacon Rock,” he said. Restoring the roof with historically accurate old-growth cedar is mandatory, he added, even if that old-growth wood comes from far away from Beacon Rock.

Not much quality cedar comes from Washington sources these days, said McMurry, the state parks preservation planner. “Most of it comes from B.C.,” McMurry said by email. “It is possible to source domestically, from somewhere in the Northwest, but that could increase costs despite any tariff impacts. There is an economy of scale in production in the B.C. mills that sometimes works to our advantage.” Where the wood will come from and exactly how much it will cost now looks up in the air, McMurry said. “Some of this also depends on the exact day the order is placed, and possibly delivered,” he said.

There aren’t many photos of Civilian Conservation Corps men working at the kitchen shelter, but these snapshots of road building and a view of CCC Camp Beacon Rock from the Beacon Rock Trail were taken in 1935 and 1936. (Contributed by Washington State Parks) Photo Biddle connection Here’s a rundown of CCC history at Beacon Rock that a future kiosk and plaza may emphasize. “Like countless structures in protected outdoor places across the nation,” the Beacon Rock State Park history webpage states, “this historic picnic shelter was built by young men employed by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was an agency created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide jobs and get money into people’s pockets during the depths of the Great Depression. “Intended to provide useful employment and training for single men aged 18 to 25, the CCC ultimately provided jobs for more than 2 million enrollees who performed work in national and state parks and forests at more than 500 camps.” CCC workers in Washington made roughly $1 a day. An initial CCC crew arrived at Beacon Rock in August 1935. A second crew followed in October 1936. It consisted of enrollees from Arkansas, according to the foundation. Three more crews followed, pushing along work projects at Beacon Rock through 1940.

Civilian Conservation Corps crew members fell a tree in the Beacon Rock area. (Contributed by Washington State Parks) Photo “Camp life was similar to other locations, with a recreation hall and educational opportunities provided, as well as trips into town on weekends for movies and religious services,” the foundation’s history states. “Much of the work in the park involved restoration of areas burned in a wildfire in 1929. Other projects included road and trail building, including improvements to the Beacon Rock trail built by Henry Biddle. Crews also built a caretaker house, community kitchens, and campground and picnic areas.” Henry J. Biddle was the Vancouver landowner and geologist who purchased Beacon Rock in 1915. He bought it from other owners who had wanted to turn the ancient volcanic plug into a quarry, blasting the rock with dynamite and barging the rubble away for construction projects. Biddle is the man you can thank for building the first zigzagging trail to the summit of the scenic rock. (You can also thank him for a protected wetland and forest in Southeast Vancouver: Biddle Lake and Columbia Springs Environmental Education Center.) Astonishingly, when Biddle’s descendants tried donating Beacon Rock to Washington for a state park, they were turned down. Subsequent discussions explored turning the Washington rock into an Oregon park instead, but when those discussions hit the papers, outrage ensued. On April 14, 1935, 265 acres of Beacon Rock, Hamilton Mountain and the site of today’s campground and picnic areas were accepted by the Washington State Park Committee. (Additional land donations eventually increased Beacon Rock State Park’s size to 4,464 acres, making it one of the largest parks in Washington.)

Word about Hamann’s project has even reached Biddle descendants in other parts of the nation, Floberg said. “They’ve been sending us donations from places like Pennsylvania,” he said. “You go, Isaac!”