Tiger Mountain State Forest was heavily logged and mined for several years. Once depleted of easily-accessed raw goods, the timber and mine companies sold the land to the state of Washington, which in turn officially established it as a state park in 1981. Many of the existing trails are old logging and mining trails with the tracks removed. In 1924, a train carrying ore wrecked on the steep mountainside, and the company that owned the train was unable to remove the train cars and simply left it. The wreckage is still visible today; it can be found near the Middle Tiger Mountain.