Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park is located in the U.S. state of Washington, in the Olympic Peninsula. The park can be divided into three basic regions: the Pacific coastline, the Olympic Mountains, and the temperate rainforest. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt originally created Olympic National Monument in 1909 and after Congress voted to authorize a redesignation to National Park status, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the legislation in 1938. In 1976, Olympic National Park became an International Biosphere Reserve, and in 1981 it was designated a World Heritage Site.

In 1988, almost all of the Olympic Peninsula was designated as the Olympic Wilderness, further enhancing the protection of the region. The coastal portion of the park is a rugged, sandy beach along with a strip of adjacent forest. It is 73 miles (117 km) long but just a few miles wide, with native communities at the mouths of two rivers. The Hoh River has the Hoh people and at the town of La Push at the mouth of the Quileute River live the Quileute.

The beach has unbroken stretches of wilderness ranging from 10 to 20 miles (16 km to 32 km). While some beaches are primarily sand, others are covered with heavy rock and very large boulders. Bushy overgrowth, slippery footing, tides and misty rain forest weather all hinder foot travel. (Times to hike should typically be doubled.) The coastal strip is more readily accessible than the interior of the Olympics; due to the difficult terrain, very few backpackers venture beyond casual day-hiking distances.

The western side of the park sports a temperate rain forest, including the Hoh Rain Forest and Quinault Rain Forest, the wettest area in the continental United States (the island of Kauai in the state of Hawaii gets more rain). Because this is a temperate rainforest, as opposed to a tropical one like the Amazon Rainforest in South America, it is dominated by dense coniferous timber, including Sitka Spruce, Western Hemlock, Coast Douglas-fir and Western redcedar and mosses that coat the bark of these trees and even drip down from their branches in green, moist tendrils.