Olympic's boundaries were assembled gradually: established as Mount Olympus National Monument in 1909, redesignated a national park in 1938, then expanded over following decades to add the rainforest river valleys and, in 1953, much of the wilderness Pacific coast strip. Each addition required separate political action, building the park's distinctive shape over roughly a century.
Here's a piece of how this park came to look the way it does. Olympic didn't arrive all at once. It started in nineteen-oh-nine as a high-country monument, mostly to save the elk and the mountain peaks. It became a national park in nineteen thirty-eight, then grew outward in stages, reaching out to grab the rainforest valleys and, later, that long strip of wild coast. Each addition was its own fight, its own act of Congress or stroke of a president's pen. The whole, sprawling shape you're driving the edge of was assembled piece by hard-won piece over the better part of a century.
Photo: Dllu · CC BY-SA 4.0
