By the 1920's, many of the trees on Washington's westside were harvested for timber. Fifty years of logging ran at such a feverish pace that hillsides were left barren or covered with debris.  State Forester Mike T. Webster and other far-seeing officials realized that vital northwest resources and industry would be lost if someone didn't begin planting trees in harvested areas, to rejuvenate the forests. 

So began the state's first tree nursery, a 30-acre site in Capital Forest near Littlerock, started in 1936.  It was a showcase of nursery technology with overhead sprinklers, cone drying operation and power extractor that pulled seed from cones.  That year, Civilian Conservation Corps crews planted 1.25 million Douglas-fir nursery seedlings, to reforest 15,624 acres of state trust lands.  But for all the technology and efforts, the nursery could not grow seedlings fast enough. 

In 1958, on 80 acres of loamy soil near Olympia, a new nursery was dedicated, named after Webster, then Supervisor of the new Department of Natural Resources.  With Olympia's mild winters, it was a fine, fertile place to propagate seeedlings. 

The L.T. Mike Webster Forest Nursery was established just south of Olympia, Washington. The nursery consists of 270 acres of bareroot ground and 30,000 square feet of greenhouses.  The nursery program is run like a business. It receives no funding and all operations, including capital improvements, come from income derived from the sale of seedlings. 

The objective of the Webster Nursery is to produce 8 to 10 million seedlings annually to be planted on DNR managed state trust land and to make available to the small private land owners 3 to 5 million seedlings that can be used for planting to meet the requirements of the State Forest Practices Act. 

Seeds are gathered from around the state - from forests high in the Cascades, from wooded cliffs over the Pacific Ocean, from nature preserves on rattlesnake Ridge and from high alpine areas of the Ahtanum. 

These seeds are then sown in the nursery beds or in the greenhouse.  With hand weeding and the latest in transplant techniques, all are nurtured to hardy seedlings that will have the best chance of of survival in the wild. 

When dormant, the seedlings are lifted from nursery beds in December, hand sorted to assure top quality, packaged and placed in cold storage to await shipment.  Each seedling is to be planted where it will grow best - in the forest zone where its seed was collected. 

Self-funded since 1962, seeds, salaries, improvements and operations are paid from the nursery's $2.5 million in yearly revenues.  For all the changes, the nursery's mission remains unchanged - to grow hardy seedlings that will keep state trust lands green forever.