Plan to Give Rocks ‘Natural’ Look Is Halted

Forest Service officials are backing off plans to spray-paint some rocks they fear don’t look “natural” enough to sit along a scenic highway over the top of the Cascade Mountains.

“We are not going to proceed with the painting of the rocks as originally planned,” said Ron DeHart, a spokesman for the Forest Service in the Seattle area. “We decided if this is disturbing to people, let’s let it go and see what it looks like in a year.”

Rep. Jack Metcalf (R-Wash.) said he reacted in disbelief when he first heard about the idea and put heat on the agency to abandon the plan.

“I said it can’t be true. Nobody is that stupid,” Metcalf said in an interview Thursday. “The only people who paint rocks are high school kids when they win a football game or graduate.”

But it turns out the “rock colorization” projects have become fairly commonplace on national scenic highways throughout the country, including the Mt. St. Helens Highway in Washington, Metcalf said.

Rocks newly exposed along the highways, by rock slides or in road cuts due to construction, sometimes are sprayed with a liquid mixture of iron and manganese because of concerns it takes too long for them to weather naturally, he said.

The Forest Service and the Washington State Department of Transportation planned to spend as much as $18,000 to spray rocks along a section of U.S. Highway 2 crossing the Cascade Mountains at Stevens Pass near Skykomish, Wash.

Metcalf said the costs could have risen to $37,000 because bids on the project accepted earlier this month were twice as high as expected.

Officials for both agencies said in a letter to Metcalf the project would be put on hold to assess how the rocks were doing on their own over the next 12 to 18 months.