Lady of the Woods

Lady of the Woods is a roughly three-foot sculpture of a reclining woman carved directly into a boulder in a mountain-hemlock grove behind the Steel Information Center. It’s a short historic side trip rather than a big lake vista: the nature loop is 0.7 miles with 120 feet of climbing, and it passes other historic park structures. Pick up the self-guiding brochure at the trailhead; if you like small, odd bits of park history, this loop is worth the walk. Dogs are allowed on the loop.

The Steel Information Center is at park headquarters on Munson Valley Road. It has parking, accessible flush restrooms, potable water and a bottle-filling station; those facilities are at the center, not beside the carving. Accessible parking and restrooms there don’t establish that the nature loop itself is wheelchair-accessible.

Dr. Earl Russell Bush, a physician serving U.S. engineers on the first Rim Drive, carved the figure during the 1917 season. Work began on October 4, and when Bush left on October 19, the carving was still incomplete. He chose the boulder in the forest, and park blacksmith William Ivy made him a set of tools. Bush wanted the figure to stand for the park’s wilderness and the richness of life people might otherwise overlook.

The figure was publicly identified as Bush’s work in 1921, and a trail was built to it around 1930 as interest grew. The origin of “Lady of the Woods” is less certain: the earliest known printed use was in a 1921 article by Anne Shannon Monroe, while Bush thought park photographer and concessioner Kiser may have coined it. The name stuck, but its source remains unknown.

The unfinished carving is meant to sit naturally in the forest, so take a close look at the boulder rather than expecting a freestanding statue. Keep some of the boulder and hemlocks in the frame if you take a photo; they show how the figure emerges from the rock. Snow usually covers it until June or July, depending on the melt, so it may not be visible in early season.