Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park covers 922,650 acres on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, west of Puget Sound. Three entirely different landscapes coexist within the park's boundaries: the glaciated Olympic Mountains, including 7,965-foot Mount Olympus; temperate rainforests on the western slopes that receive up to 14 feet of rain per year; and 73 miles of undeveloped Pacific coastline. The park ranks 6th in annual visitation among the 63 U.S. national parks, drawing roughly 4 million visitors per year. Port Angeles is the main gateway, 90 miles from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Congress established Olympic as a national park in 1938, and UNESCO designated it a World Heritage Site in 1981.

Olympic is best known for the Hoh Rain Forest, one of the largest temperate rainforests in North America, where big-leaf maples draped in thick moss create a green canopy over trails that receive up to 167 inches of rain annually. The alpine zone around Hurricane Ridge, accessible by a paved road to 5,242 feet, gives visitors mountain panoramas without technical climbing. The park's Pacific shoreline features sea stacks, tide pools, and sections of beach reachable only on foot. A single park encompasses more ecosystem variety — rainforest, glacier, and ocean — than almost any other unit in the national park system.

By car: US 101 loops around the Olympic Peninsula and provides access to all major park areas. Port Angeles, on the north shore, is the main entry point and home to the Olympic National Park Visitor Center. Hurricane Ridge Road leaves Port Angeles heading south into the park. From Seattle, take the Bainbridge Island ferry across Puget Sound and then US 101 west — about 3.5 hours to Port Angeles total. The Hoh Rain Forest entrance is on the west side, roughly 90 miles south of Port Angeles on US 101.

By ferry: Washington State Ferries run from Seattle to Bainbridge Island (35 minutes) and from Edmonds to Kingston, both connecting to US 101 on the Peninsula. Fares apply for vehicles. A passenger-only ferry between Seattle and Port Angeles is a seasonal service; check current schedules.

By air: Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) is the closest major airport, roughly 90 miles by road and ferry from Port Angeles. No commercial airport serves the Peninsula directly. Car rental at SEA and driving or ferrying across is the standard approach.

The Olympic Mountains are geologically young and geologically unusual. As the Juan de Fuca oceanic plate subducted beneath North America over the past 35 million years, it scraped off a thick wedge of seafloor sediment and basalt that piled up against the continent. That accumulated material — called an accretionary wedge — was compressed, folded, and uplifted to form the mountains visitors see today. The rocks at the core of the Olympics are ocean-floor basalt; the surrounding ridges are ancient marine sediments turned to hard sandstone and shale.

Heavy precipitation on the western slopes, up to 167 inches per year in the Hoh Valley, and glacial ice carved the deep U-shaped valleys that now hold the major rivers and lakes. Lake Crescent, with a maximum depth of about 624 feet, occupies a glacially scoured basin. The Blue Glacier on Mount Olympus is one of the most studied glaciers in the contiguous United States and has retreated measurably since systematic monitoring began in the 1950s.

The rain shadow created by the Olympic Mountains is among the most dramatic in North America. The west-facing Hoh Valley receives 140+ inches of rain annually, while the city of Sequim on the northeastern side of the peninsula gets just 16 inches — drier than Los Angeles.

Roosevelt elk are the park's signature large mammal. An estimated 5,000 elk live within the park boundaries — the largest unmanaged herd in the United States. The Hoh Rain Forest is the best place to see them in winter and spring, when herds of dozens move through the valley floor. The Quinault and Queets valleys hold additional herds. Elk are easiest to observe at dawn and dusk.

Black bears range throughout the forested areas. Store all food in bear canisters or park-provided food storage boxes at campgrounds; bears have become habituated to campsite food at Hoh and Sol Duc. Mountain goats are visible on the high rocky ridges around Hurricane Ridge, where a non-native population has been managed through periodic relocation efforts. Olympic marmots, found only on the Olympic Peninsula, live in the alpine meadows above 4,500 feet and are easily spotted at Hurricane Ridge in summer.

The rocky intertidal zone on the coast holds one of the most diverse tide pool communities on the West Coast. Ochre sea stars, purple sea urchins, giant green anemones, and ochre and purple sea stars occupy the pools. The northern spotted owl nests in old-growth forests throughout the park. Bald eagles fish along Lake Crescent and the coastal rivers year-round. Orca pods and gray whales pass along the outer coast during annual migrations in spring.

Indigenous peoples have lived on the Olympic Peninsula for at least 12,000 years. The Makah, Elwha Klallam, Jamestown S'Klallam, Lower Elwha Klallam, Skokomish, Quinault, Quileute, and Hoh tribes each hold deep connections to different parts of the peninsula — its forests, rivers, and coast. Whale hunting by the Makah at Neah Bay at the peninsula's northwest tip represents one of the oldest continuous cultural traditions in North America.

Spanish and British explorers charted the outer coast in the late 1700s. In 1788, British Captain John Meares named the highest peak Mount Olympus after the home of the Greek gods. The first recorded overland crossing of the Olympic interior was the Press Expedition of 1889–90, a five-month winter traverse covered by the Seattle Press newspaper. In 1897, President Grover Cleveland created the Olympic Forest Reserve to protect the area from timber interests. President Theodore Roosevelt designated Olympic National Monument in 1909 to protect the Roosevelt elk herds being decimated by hunting. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Olympic National Park Act on June 29, 1938.

In 1981, UNESCO declared Olympic a World Heritage Site, and it was also designated a Biosphere Reserve. In 2011 and 2014, the Elwha River Restoration Project completed the removal of two large dams, the largest dam removal in U.S. history at the time, returning salmon to more than 70 miles of river habitat within the park.