Until the late nineteenth century, the interior of the Olympic Mountains remained unmapped by settlers and shrouded in rumor. The Press Expedition set out to cross the range in the winter of 1889 and spent nearly six months struggling through deep snow and dense rainforest, completing one of the first recorded traverses of the unexplored mountains.
Think about how empty this map once was. As late as the eighteen eighties, the whole heart of these mountains was a blank space, unexplored by settlers, rumored to hide anything from a lost tribe to a hidden valley. Then in the winter of eighteen eighty-nine, a scruffy band called the Press Expedition set out to cross it, dead into the worst season they could've picked. They slogged for nearly six months through deep snow and tangled rainforest, half-starved by the end, just to prove a man could get through. You'll cross country they bled for.
Photo: Dllu · CC BY-SA 4.0
