By providing open space, artificial lichen establishment substrates can allow study of the process of establishment and lichenization, which are among the processes that play out to determine lichen communities. They may also be useful to understand how quickly lichen communities can change and become re-established as we seek to interpret lichen biomonitoring data. We left 5 artificial lichen substrates for 42 months to be naturally colonized by lichens in an Oregon Fraxinus latifolia forest. Compared to a nearby forest macrolichen community with 45 species, we observed eight macrolichen taxa becoming established on the substrates. Many of the developing thalli could be identified only to genus. Taxa becoming established largely represented a subset of the forest community that lacked cyanolichens and included a greater proportion of nitrogen-tolerant species, suggesting that these taxa establish particularly quickly.