Kid Valley is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Cowlitz County, Washington Cowlitz County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 110,730. The county seat is Kelso, and its largest city is Longview. The county was formed in April 1854. Its name derives from th ...

. Kid Valley is located east of the city of

Castle Rock Castle Rock may refer to: Geography Islands * Castle Rock (Alaska), an island off the coast of the U.S. state of Alaska * Castle Rock, Hong Kong, an island of Hong Kong, part of the Po Toi Islands * Castle Rock (Massachusetts), an island in th ...

and along the North Fork Toutle River. Kid Valley is reached by traveling east of Castle Rock along

Washington State Route 504 State Route 504 (SR 504, designated as the Spirit Lake Memorial Highway) is a State highways in Washington, state highway in southwestern Washington (state), Washington state in the United States. It travels along the North Fork Toutle R ...

, which is also known as the Spirit Lake Memorial Highway. The Kid Valley community is part of the Toutle Lake School District, a

K-12 K-1 is a professional kickboxing promotion established in 1993 by karateka Kazuyoshi Ishii. Originally under the ownership of the Fighting and Entertainment Group (FEG), K-1 was considered to be the largest Kickboxing organization in the world. ...

school district of about 600 students. Kid Valley is located northwest of Mount St. Helens. The eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, was the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Geography

The Kid Valley Bridge carries State Highway 504 from the north to the south side of the North Fork of the

Toutle River The Toutle River is a tributary of the Cowlitz River in the U.S. state of Washington. It rises in two forks merging near Toutle below Mount St. Helens and joins the Cowlitz near Castle Rock, upstream of the larger river's confluence with the Co ...

. This bridge was the only bridge on the highway not damaged or completely destroyed by

mudflow A mudflow, also known as mudslide or mud flow, is a form of mass wasting involving fast-moving flow of debris and dirt that has become liquified by the addition of water. Such flows can move at speeds ranging from 3 meters/minute to 5 meters/se ...

s following the

1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens In March 1980, a series of volcanic explosions and pyroclastic flows began at Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, Washington, United States. A series of Phreatic eruption, phreatic blasts occurred from the summit and escalated until a major ...

. Its survival was due to its high clearance.Robert L. Schuster
"Effects of the eruptions on civil works and operations in the Pacific Northwest"
pp. 701–718 in, Peter W. Lipman, Donal R. Mullineaux (eds), ''The 1980 Eruptions of Mount St. Helens, Washington'', US Geological Survey Professional Paper 1250, US Government Printing Office, 1982. There was a logging camp, 19 mile, in Kid Valley. Some of the bridges destroyed by Mount St. Helens were owned by logging companies. Another natural disaster that affected logging in Kid Valley was a storm in February 1996 which caused multiple

debris flow Debris flows are geological phenomena in which water-laden masses of soil and fragmented Rock (geology), rock flow down mountainsides, funnel into stream channels, entrain objects in their paths, and form thick, muddy deposits on valley floors. ...

s. It was mostly logging roads that were damaged, but State Highway 504 was also blocked in two places near Kid Valley. There is a forest campsite in Kid Valley.Kim Cooper Findling, ''Day Trips from Portland, Oregon: Getaway Ideas for the Local Traveler'', p. 27, Rowman & Littlefield, 2011 .

References

External links

Toutle Lake School District website
Unincorporated communities in Cowlitz County, Washington Unincorporated communities in Washington (state) {{CowlitzCountyWA-geo-stub