Lake Sylvia State Park in northern Montesano, Washington, occupies a 233-acre temperate rain forest landscape centered on Lake Sylvia and Sylvia Creek. Its history begins in the late 1860s, when Michael F. Luark homesteaded the site and built Grays Harbor County’s first water-powered sawmill there in 1871. A dam built around 1909 and a now mostly demolished penstock later helped supply Montesano with water and electricity into the early 1930s, with Elsie Wilder notably operating the power plant in the 1920s. After the city bought the watershed in 1931 to protect its water source, the property passed to Washington State Parks in 1936 and became the public recreation area it is today.