Newaukum Lake

Newaukum Lake sits quietly nestled in the rugged terrain of Lewis County, Washington, positioned directly beneath the historical flight path of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305. On the stormy night of November 24, 1971, a mysterious man using the alias D. B. Cooper hijacked the Boeing 727. He extorted $200,000 in cash and four parachutes, released the passengers in Seattle, and ordered the plane to fly low and slow toward Reno. Somewhere over the dense, unyielding forests of southwestern Washington, Cooper lowered the plane's aft stairs and leapt into a freezing downpour. Because the flight path cuts over the Cinebar area near Newaukum Lake, this remote backcountry basin has long been localized by amateur sleuths and aviation historians as a key landmark in the estimated "drop zone". Though a fragment of the plane's aft stairs was actually recovered near Cinebar years later, no definitive trace of Cooper, his parachutes, or the bulk of the cash has ever been found in the wild terrain surrounding the lake