[G]oblins Gate is a dramatic entrance to the Rica Canyon of the Elwha River in Olympic National Park. It’s at the lower end of Geyser Valley and the Humes Ranch area. The river is suddenly pinched into a narrow canyon between vertical rock walls (like a gate). It is an easy day-hike to Goblins Gate, via Rica Canyon Trail.
A broad, low ridge of resistant rock, a few hundred feet high, runs athwart the main Elwha River channel, at the bottom end of Geyser Valley, and the river cuts through it.
Both sides of the Geyser area show multiple benches along the banks & hillside along the river, indicating that a lake once existed behind this resistant barrier. These benches … and the relative wide, in-filled valley, are what made the area attractive to homesteaders, and to the native tribes before them.
The river broke through the rock (or the canyon is a geological fissure…), and now runs in a chiseled white-water gorge. The striking entrance to this slot in the rock, vertical cliffs on both sides, is called Goblins Gate.
Robert L. Wood, in his book Olympic Mountains Trail Guide, calls it ‘Goblin Gates’. He has also written books on the Press Expedition (the first European explorers who ‘discovered’ and named both the Valley & Gate), and other early historic explorers and expeditions of the Olympic Peninsula & mountains. However, USGS topographic maps use Goblins Gate, as does the Olympic National Park. Goblins Gate makes better sense, since there is only one gate … but that doesn’t mean that the original name wasn’t the other one. Searchers, especially in old sources, will want to try both ways.
There is precedent for the plural form of a singe gate. The gates of Hell. Opening the flood gates.
In the map-crop above, the white area shown below the Gate is Anderson Ranch. Note the two structures shown on this older topo map. Upslope from the Ranch is Mount Fitzhenry, and across the river is Hurricane Hill.