Olympic National Park United States

Legendary

The park cover everything from rugged ocean coastlines to forests to wildflower meadows.

Photo by U.S. Forest Service- Pacific

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In 1937, Forest Service guides drove President Franklin Roosevelt around the Olympic Peninsula and tried to keep his eyes on the mountains. They didn't want him looking at the clear-cut hillsides along the road.

He looked anyway. Nine months later he signed the bill creating Olympic National Park.

The story starts with elk. By the early 1900s, hunters were killing the peninsula's elk for their hides and their teeth, which were made into watch charms.

On March 2, 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt set aside about 620,000 acres as Mount Olympus National Monument to save them. The elk are called Roosevelt elk today.

Protection on paper didn't mean much in practice. Over the next twenty years, presidents cut the monument to half its size so timber companies could get at the trees.

By 1923 the Forest Service had a plan that ignored the monument boundary completely. Logging surged, and public anger grew through the 1920s as people realized the giant old-growth forests were disappearing.

At the same time, more visitors were arriving. Automobiles made the peninsula reachable, and when the loop highway around it was finished in 1931, tourists could finally drive to places that had taken days to reach on foot.

The people who came saw both the forests and the stumps. Conservation groups pushed hard for a real national park, and Roosevelt delivered it on June 29, 1938.

The park now protects nearly a million acres with three completely different worlds inside it. Glacier-topped mountains rise in the center, temperate rainforest fills the western valleys, and 73 miles of wild Pacific coastline were added in 1953.

The Hoh Rain Forest gets around 12 feet of rain a year. Moss hangs from the trees in curtains, and some spruces stand over 300 feet tall.

Drive up to Hurricane Ridge for views across the mountains to Canada on a clear day. Walk the Hall of Mosses trail in the Hoh Rain Forest, an easy loop under trees draped in green. Explore the tide pools at Ruby Beach or Kalaloch at low tide, looking for starfish and anemones.