Near this location on August 21, 1962, Arthur Barclay and a team of botanists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture collected bark of the Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia Nutt. Drs. Monroe Wall and Mansukh Wani, of the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina, under contract to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, isolated taxol from that sample. Since 1990 taxol has been the drug of choice for treatment of ovarian cancer, and is widely used in the treatment of breast cancer. Presented in 2002 by the USDA Forest Service, National Cancer Institute and The American Society of Pharmacognosy on the 40th anniversary of the collection.

Location of the plaque: La Wis Wis Campground, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, near Packwood, WA. Note that there are numerous specimens of Pacific yew in the campground, one within a few feet of the plaque. The precise location of the collection is recorded in the NCI archives as "8 miles NW of Packwood, WA on Rt. 87". The plaque is approximately 10 miles east of that spot.