Washington state’s quiet places dropped from 21 to 3 in two decades

Evidence

In 1984, early in my career recording nature sounds, I identified 21 places in Washington State (an area of 71,302 square miles) with noise-free intervals of 15 minutes or longer. In 2007 only three of these places remain on my list. — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 64

Categorization

• QUESTION: What exactly qualifies a place for the 15-minute noise-free list, and could the methodology be replicated today for a fresh count?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 64