Three parks in one
Glaciated mountains, wilderness coast and temperate rain forest, documented from the park authority's information.
At 922,651 acres (3,734 km²), Olympic is one of the largest parks in the Lower 48 and the most varied on the West Coast: from the glaciated summit of Mount Olympus it is less than 33 miles (53 km) to the Pacific, and in between grows one of the last great temperate rain forests on Earth.
The park authority describes the park as three ecosystems: rugged, glacier-capped mountains, wild Pacific coast and old-growth rain forest. They do not lie one behind the other but side by side, and no road runs through them. Highway 101 circles the peninsula, and each area has its own spur road: Hurricane Ridge from Port Angeles, Sol Duc and Lake Crescent from the 101 in the north, the Hoh from Upper Hoh Road, the beaches from Rialto to Kalaloch from the coastal stretch, Quinault and Staircase from the south and east.
The mountains are young and came from the sea. Some 34 million years ago the Juan de Fuca Plate began to dive beneath North America; the sediments and basalts of the seabed were scraped off, folded and lifted. The ice sheet of the last Ice Age split around them and carved out the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound, leaving the peninsula isolated. That explains why pikas and grizzlies are missing and why the Olympic marmot lives only here.
Rain decides everything. Pacific storms unload 140 to 167 inches (3.6 to 4.2 m) a year on the west side; in the valleys of the Hoh, Queets, Quinault and Bogachiel it feeds a rain forest of spruce and hemlock up to 250 ft (76 m) tall, with moss on every branch and trees on stilt roots. In the rain shadow, Port Angeles records only 25 to 30 inches (635 to 760 mm). Hurricane Ridge gets 30 to 35 ft (9 to 11 m) of snow, Mount Olympus 50 to 70 ft (15 to 21 m).
The park exists because of the elk. In 1897 Grover Cleveland had the forests protected as a reserve; in 1909 Theodore Roosevelt made part of it Mount Olympus National Monument to save the dwindling herds, and the animals have been called Roosevelt elk ever since. Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Port Angeles himself in 1937 and signed the park bill the following year. The coastal strip was added in 1953, recognition as a biosphere reserve followed in 1976, World Heritage status in 1981 and wilderness designation in 1988.
People have lived here for 13,500 years. Eight tribes, the Makah, Quileute, Hoh, Quinault, Skokomish, Port Gamble S’Klallam, Jamestown S’Klallam and Lower Elwha Klallam, have never given up their bond with the land and the water. The removal of the two Elwha dams in 2014 returned to the river the salmon that had fed the Klallam for thousands of years; a few months later they spawned in the park for the first time in a hundred years.
The park in numbers
- Area
- 922,651 acres, about 3,734 km² (1,442 sq mi)
- Highest point
- Mount Olympus, 7,980 ft, 2,432 m
- Coast
- 73 miles (117 km) of wilderness coast
- Rain
- 140 to 167 inches (3.6 to 4.2 m) in the rain forest
- Snow
- 30 to 35 ft (9 to 11 m) on Hurricane Ridge
- Glaciers
- 184 in 2009, 266 in 1982
- National monument since
- 1909
- National park since
- 1938
- World Heritage Site since
- 1981
