All forests in the American west, barring a few relatively small parks, are new growth. Predominantly from settlers cutting them down.
Indigenous practices changed which trees grew, for instance the Gary oak was much more prevalent in areas they tended. But old growth was predominantly removed by settlers.
Nope. The woods in Oregon (Willamette Valley) and WA were planted and/or allowed to grow by settlers. There are true old growths along the coast and higher up the mountains.
If you want to specifically hike through the old-growth forests, Olympic Peninsula in WA is the best option.
Humans were modifying the Earth on the continent-wide scale long before the industrial age.
Yes, in the Wilamette Valley the indigenous folks maintained Gary Oaks and prevented other trees from growing there. This was open oak savannah, and when the settlers came in they took the land and turned it to agricultural land. What they couldn't plant on, they ignored, and other tree species moved in to land that was previously managed to grow Gary oaks.
I'm a PNW native, you don't need to tell me about the small sliver of old growth we still have in the Olympics.
> Yes, in the Wilamette Valley the indigenous folks maintained Gary Oaks and prevented other trees from growing there.
Yes, and that's a fancy way of saying "used periodic burns" to remove the vegetation to make the land more hospitable for grazers. Meaning more animals to hunt, this was arguably a form of agriculture and also served to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.
> I'm a PNW native, you don't need to tell me about the small sliver of old growth we still have in the Olympics.
Then you should actually learn about the history, and not its Disneyified version.
