Olympic National Park, NW USA

Olympic National Park is mainly the inner Olympic Mountains of the Olympic Peninsula, a far northwest promontory of Washington State, at the far northwest corner of the United States.   The old-fashioned US Highway 101 enters the Peninsula at its base, and circumnavigates the Park, mostly staying outside it.  ‘The Loop’ is a big part of the popularity of Olympic, and a big defining element of its character and the Peninsula that hosts it.  Although it can be driven in one long day,  the Loop-tour around the Peninsula is a quick weekend-sized outing.

The big exception to the mountainous-interior identity of Olympic National, is a long narrow strip of Pacific Ocean coast on the outer western side of the Peninsula, which was an add-on following the original establishment.  Highway 101 sidles for over 10 miles along the southern Kalaloch beaches-area (world-class RV-habitat), and then makes another easy and well-developed access, via La Push and Mora.  Hikers can also go in at the mouth of the Hoh River, Lake Ozette and Shi Shi Beach.

a favorite of open-road RV vacationers, because Highway 101 circumnavigates it, passing through hills covered with commercial timber stands prettier than most parks (even the clearcuts), and little towns & burgs they wistfully fantasize living in (and sometimes, end up doing).  ‘The Loop’ that Hwy 101 makes around the interior mountainous Park of the Olympic Peninsula, goes a long way to define the public’s perception of their Park.  Playing a strong backup role in setting the tone of Olympic’s public relations, is the sensational eastern frontrange of the Olympic Mountains, parading before virtually all of urbanized Puget Sound … and southwestern British Columbia.

Out on the Olympic Peninsula, the 2-lane Hwy 101 goes past a handful of reasonably well-developed RV & trailer-suitable developed Park-destinations.   These usually have toll-booths that bring in cash for the Park, and allow for the collection of usership-statistics that are important in Congress.  Park budgets everywhere have gotten tougher in recent times, and ideas for spending always exceed the appropriations & revenue.   The modern RV was a boon to Parks like Olympic … but then climbing fuel costs have had predictable effects.   The collapse of petroleum-prices over the off-season of 2014-2015 may release a pent-up RV-fever.

Day-hikers and car-campers have more options than big-rig travelers (as always), and there are many facilities & venues near to but outside the Park.   The more-serious & accomplished hikers & backpackers are the smallest user-group, but they have the widest array of choices, the lowest costs (zero, with research & luck), and the greatest access to both nature & adventure … with sweat-equity and tolerance of adversity.

… got its start with Preservationist and Conservationist efforts of the 1890s.  Initially, the whole of the Olympic Peninsula – mountains and lowlands, inland waters and ocean beaches, Native & Pioneer human settlements and raven-country alike – was the goal.  But decades dragged on, as the giant old growth forests at low elevations were methodically felled (ie, “converted” to plantation), railroads built, and then replaced by logging truck roads.  It may have been only with some luck, that the Park-movement eventually got the remnant Olympic Mountains fastness, 40 years after the fact in 1938.

The original idealized goal would indeed have made a stunning & valuable nature-preserve, encompassing a relatively complete & integrated representative habitat & ecosystem, on a relatively small (borderline-realistic, not-totally-impractical) geological scale.  Although greed & avarice (of loggers & government) is generally accepted as the – what else? – reason for not saving the Olympic ‘biosystem’ as a whole, there are other factors in play.   The numerous Native American Tribes present on the scene is certainly a big one.

This Peninsula and its adjoining Strait of Juan de Fuca form a strategic and tactical security bulwark & bottleneck for the USA and North America, “of the first magnitude”.  Major military & security considerations  drove the construction of world-class fortifications even in the late 19th C;  prompted very extensive defensive build-up during World War II, and hosts a heavy Homeland Security presence in the early 21st C.  All of these require roads, ports & harbors, workers, communities and infrasture; even setting aside the forestry-wealth.   The long-persisting and on-going hold-out hope for an intact preservation of the Olympic Peninsula, probably relies on a degree of selective blindness to what are ultimately nonnegotiable countervailing considerations.

 

 

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