The Creation Of Solidifying Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park is known for its beauty, mountain ranges, and variety of wildlife. However, it took many decades to be established as a National Park. Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, several people proposed the creation of a national park in this area, but most of these proposals failed. Many saw the crowded forests and Roosevelt Elks in the area as a lucrative investment, where they could gather timber and food. Supporters of the national park had both preservationist and conservationist reasons; some wanted to preserve the natural, untouched beauty and others thought it would be helpful to have a backup supply of timber readily available. In this essay, I will detail the process of solidifying Olympic National Park and explain

The first to suggest the creation of a National Park in this area was none other than John Muir, the famous naturalist and conservationist. He proposed this idea after visiting the area in 1889. The following year James Wickersham, a congressman and judge who had explored the eastern regions of the Olympic mountain range, contended with Muir’s proposal and made a similar proposal himself. The same year Lieutenant Joseph O’Neil made an interesting comment about the Olympic area as a National Park after his expeditions in the area, he reported that “While the country on the outer slope of these mountains is valuable, the interior is useless for all practicable purposes. It would, however, serve admirably for a national park” (US Congress). O’Neil suggested this area as a National Park not for resources, but simply for its beauty. This view was contradictory to John Muir who previously proposed the creation of a park in this area; John Muir was famously a conservationist and believed in protecting areas for resources. It is interesting that two people with different viewpoints suggested the same usage of the land. In 1897, Olympic Forest Preserve was created by President Grover Cleveland which spanned over the center of the Olympic Peninsula. The first real proposal for a national park in Olympic was made by

When the area was first explored, visitors marveled at the grandiose of the forests; Wickersham stated it was the “heaviest forest growth in North America . . . untouched by fire or ax" (13). Even in a time when there were still parts of the country to be explored, Wickersham and others understood the gravity of preserving a forest area unaffected by human hands. Therefore, it was decided that this land would be set aside and not used by the public, but during the early 1900s opponents tried to change this. Because the area had such overgrowth, it could have provided more than enough timber for the country for years. As the country faced turmoil with the first world war, the opponent's argument grew stronger and more than a third of the reserved land was returned to the public. Immediately they got to work lumbering the land, greatly reducing the size of the forest. Luckily as Roosevelt came into power, he restored most of the land that was previously in the reserve, with the support from Gifford Pinchot. Along with preserving the forest, the rapidly decreasing Elk population was another push for national park status. Due to unregulated hunting in the area and the loss of habitat from lumbering, the Elk population had gone from an “estimated 25,000 to 40,000 animals in the 1850s to 2,000 or fewer in 1905” (Setzer). If hunting in the