Tacoma News Tribune
August 17, 2008
by Matt Misterek

Maxine Morse loved the outdoors.

She was a nature artist who illustrated books and calendars. She and husband Lloyd would drive their Volkswagen camper to their homestead near Graham that was passed down through Lloyd’s ancestors.

“When Maxine walked through the woods here,” said family friend Deb Cooper, “she was the mistress of the enchanted 60-acre homestead.”

Now her name will be forever associated with most of that land – about 50 acres of old-growth timber, evergreen forest and wetlands, home to elk, coyotes, eagles and other wildlife.

The Cascade Land Conservancy will preserve the Graham site and call it the Maxine G. Morse Nature Conservancy. Schoolchildren, families and other visitors will have access to it on walking trails in as soon as a year.

Lloyd Morse recently donated the land to the conservancy, as well as a $50,000 donation, to care for the property in perpetuity.

“The Morse family has been a part of this land in Pierce County for more than a century,” Lloyd Morse, 88, said in a written statement. “We have always felt the land was entrusted to us and now we have entrusted it to the region.

“My wife was a wonderful person and I am happy to have this land conserved forever in her name.”

Cooper has known the Morses since 1983, when she and her husband, Jim, were looking to buy a home. They befriended the Morses, lived on the Graham property for several years and recently bought a piece of the 60-acre homestead.

“Lloyd sold us 10 acres for a very cheap price,” Cooper said. “He gifted us and blessed us with his home. We call it the Shangri-La.”

Maxine Morse was 82 when she died in 2003. Lloyd continues to live on his property in Allyn, Mason County. He was born and went to school in Tacoma, and his land holdings in the region are considerable.

They both served in the Navy during World War II. Maxine was a draftsman; Lloyd flew off aircraft carriers and retired a lieutenant commander.

Cooper said Lloyd’s penchant for naming things after his wife dates back to the war, when he called his plane “The Maxine.”

He inherited the 60-acre homestead from rugged family members who lived on the land and who worked in some of the early bravura industries of the Pacific Northwest: the sawmills, the Northern Pacific Railroad and the Klondike gold rush.

But the Morses didn’t stop with that one piece of property. By saving much of Lloyd’s Navy earnings, Cooper said the couple were able to make real estate investments that in time allowed them to become major environmental stewards in Pierce County:

 • In 1994, the Morses donated their 53-acre property near the headwaters of the north fork of Muck Creek to the Tahoma Land Conservancy and the Tahoma Audubon Society, creating the Morse Wildlife Preserve.

 • In 2000, the Land Conservancy and the Morse Force expanded the wildlife preserve by 40 acres with the Olmstead Addition, and in 2003 added 80 acres with the inclusion of Tacoma Public Utilities’ Patterson Springs property.

Today, the 173-acre wildlife preserve is managed by the Morse Force, a working group sponsored by the Land Conservancy and Audubon organizations. The Morse Force holds monthly meetings and organizes stewardship parties on the property.

The newly donated 50-acre homestead is about three miles from the wildlife preserve.

“I don’t know what this region would do without generous people like the Morse family,” said Maryanne Tagney Jones, chairwoman of the Cascade Land Conservancy board of directors. “There is now more than 200 acres of conserved land in Pierce County directly attributable to Lloyd and Maxine Morse.”