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The Land
The land is about 20 miles north and about 35 miles east of Portland, Oregon. It is on the Swift Reservoir, about 6 miles directly south of Mt. St. Helens. Here is a map with insets that shows the location of the land relative to Portland, Oregon.
A picture of
Martha and our realtor (Nita King) with Swift Cove (on Swift Reservoir) in background and a similiar shot of
Martha.
To help you understand the orientation of this picture,
here is a map that
has a red arrow from where the photo was taken pointing to what you see in the background.
Notice that little finger of land on the opposite shore that sticks out into the
water above and slightly to the left of Nita's head. That is "Devil's Backbone",
which is circled in red on the map. Here is an interesting topo map with a 3-D effect that shows the entire Swift Reservoir (I drew the red arrow in for reference).
This is a USGS photo
of the Swift Reservoir and I've drawn the same arrow into the photo
as is on the above maps.
Here is a picture of the reservoir taken during the winter after the water has been drawn down.
Mt. St. Helens
Here is a summertime view of Mt. St. Helens from the property. This Mt. St. Helens image is from a November 2008 sunset.
Here's a
similiar shot, taken a few years ago by the previous owners.
This is Paul and Martha with Mt. St. Helens in
the background.
Here is a
map showing recreation areas
map showing recreation areas
and Mt. St. Helens.
I've outlined the land in blue (at the west end of Swift Reservoir). You are probably wondering, "how close is this land to
the blast zone?" Good question! Here are some
Satellite photos (with a scale below each one) that
show clearly the proximity of the land to the volcano. Start with the leftmost
picture that shows the mountain and the land, the land is inside the red box.
The next picture to the right doubles the resolution. In the third picture (scale .5Mi),
I drew in the red arrow that is shown in the map and USGS photo above.
If you look carefully at the picture with the red arrow you can see that
there must have been some fog on the water when the satellite photo was taken.
Pictures
This photo is taken from the road north east of the property, so you are looking south west. If you look carefully at the upper right quarter of the picture, you'll see a brown horizontal line with a small red smudge on the left. That red smudge is a sheet that I put there for reference. At the northermost end of the The brown line is the end of the driveway running east-west (the red smudge is at the east end) at the top of the turnaround. Here is a photo from near the same place, but taken length-wise so you can see Swift creek below the property.Here's a picture with two survey stakes (white pipes) taken about 4-5 years ago. The rightmost pipe is a property boundary corner. Someday I'll illustrate the location of these two pipes on a map.
My brother-in-law Dave Jankowski built a picnic table while he was visiting here. He is a great guy. On July 15, 2007, we hauled it up to the land and had our first picnic. It was a lot better with the picnic table there than without! View some pictures of that first picnic.
Swift Reservoir
Camping around Swift.Guide to Skamania County. More interesting that you might think.
Development in the Swift "subarea" of Skamania County
September 18, 2005, Land boom in the boondocksJune 13, 2009, Mt. St. Helens loop highway.
May 16, 2010, Environmental concerns have limited development on land around Mt. St. Helens (e.g., Swift Reservoir).