Mount Rainier National Park is located in southeast Pierce County and northeast Lewis County in Washington state. The park was established on March 2, 1899 as the fifth national park in the United States. The highest point in the Cascade Range, Mount Rainier is surrounded by valleys, waterfalls, subalpine meadows and 91,000 acres of old-growth forest.
About Mount Rainier National Park in brief
Mount Rainier National Park is located in southeast Pierce County and northeast Lewis County in Washington state. The park was established on March 2, 1899 as the fifth national park in the United States. The highest point in the Cascade Range, Mount Rainier is surrounded by valleys, waterfalls, subalpine meadows, and 91,000 acres of old-growth forest. More than 25 glaciers descend the flanks of the volcano, which is often shrouded in clouds that dump enormous amounts of rain and snow. Ninety-seven percent of the park is preserved as wilderness under the National Wilderness Preservation System. It is abutted by the Tatoosh, Clearwater, Glacier View, and William O. Douglas Wildernesses. Mammals that inhabit this national park are the cougar, black bear, raccoon, coyote, bobcat, snowshoe hare, weasel, mole, beaver, red fox, porcupine, skunk, marmot, deer, marten, shrew, pika, elk, and mountain goat. The common birds of this park including raptors are the thrush, chickadee, kinglet, northern goshawk, willow flycatcher, spotted owl, steller’s jay, Clark’s nutcracker, bald eagle, ptarmigan, harlequin duck, peregrine falcon, Canada jay and grosbeak.
John Muir had visited Mount Rainer in 1888 and convinced him to rededicate his life to preservation of nature. The first national park created from a national forest had been included in the Pacific Forest Reserve in 1893. It was enlarged in 1897 and renamed Mount Rainiers Forest Reserve. In 1998, the park was designated a National Historic Landmark on February 18, 1997 as a showcase for the National Park Service Rustic style architecture of the 1920s and 1930s, exemplified by the Paradise Inn and a masterpiece of early NPS master planning. The earliest evidence of human activity in the area is a projectile point dated to circa 4,000–5,800 BP found along Bench Lake Trail. A more substantial archeological find was a rock shelter near Fryingpan Creek, east of Goat Island Mountain. The shelter would not have been used all year round. The site was used by Columbia Plateau Tribes from 1000 to 300 BP. In 1963 the National park Service contracted Washington State University to study Native American use of the Mount Rainiera area.
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This page is based on the article Mount Rainier National Park published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
