Olympic National Park includes roughly seventy-three miles of wilderness Pacific coastline, among the longest undeveloped coastal stretches remaining in the contiguous United States. Much of this shoreline was added to the park by President Truman in nineteen fifty-three, preserving its sea stacks, beaches, and forests from development.
You're nearing the coast now, and the ocean changes everything ahead. Olympic protects about seventy-three miles of wild Pacific shoreline, one of the longest stretches of undeveloped coast left anywhere in the lower forty-eight. No boardwalks, no high-rises, just sea stacks, driftwood, and surf. President Truman added most of it to the park back in nineteen fifty-three, and because of that one decision, it still looks the way it has for thousands of years.
Photo: Ron Clausen · CC BY-SA 4.0
