Part of The US National Parks
- Where
- Olympic Peninsula, Washington
west of Seattle (NPS) - Coordinates
- 47.861° N, 123.935° W
Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center (NPS) - Area
- 922,651 acres;
95% wilderness (NPS) - Coast
- 73 miles of
wilderness coast (NPS) - Protected
- National monument 1909
national park 1938 (NPS) - Best visited
- All year; May and September
have shorter lines (NPS) - Advisory
- United States
(no State Department level)
Rain since breakfast, moss on every branch and moss on the moss, and trees so tall I gave up looking for their tops. Some stood in a straight row on stilts, as if lifting their feet out of the wet. Big pale-rumped deer crossed the river without hurrying. By evening I was on a cold grey beach among drift logs the size of cottages, and had stopped minding the rain.
The short answer
Olympic National Park covers the mountainous heart and much of the Pacific shore of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, west of Seattle across Puget Sound. The National Park Service gives its area as 922,651 acres and describes three distinctly different ecosystems inside it: rugged glacier-capped mountains, wild Pacific coast and old-growth temperate rain forest. Of that area, 876,447 acres, 95 per cent of the park, are congressionally designated wilderness, and the coast includes 73 miles of wilderness shore. No road crosses the park; Highway 101 runs around most of the peninsula, and roads reach in to each part from the outside.
People have lived on the Olympic Peninsula for more than 13,500 years, the Park Service says, and many tribes used what is now the park as home, hunting ground and route. The federal government set the first part aside as a national monument in 1909, and Congress redesignated it a national park in 1938.
Why it's worth knowing
Three parks in one. The Park Service puts the park’s variety down to thousands of years of geographic isolation and steep gradients of elevation, temperature and rain. The Olympic Mountains rise to Mount Olympus, 7,980 feet, where 50 to 70 feet of snow can fall in a year; on the west-facing valleys below, the Quinault, Queets, Hoh and Bogachiel, rain forest grows on 140 to 167 inches of rain a year, which the Park Service puts at 12 to 14 feet; and the shore is a wilderness coast of sea stacks, tide pools and drift logs. The park’s own count lists more than 1,200 native plant taxa, 300 bird species, 56 mammal species and at least 16 kinds of animals and 8 kinds of plants found nowhere else.
A river let go. The Elwha River once carried eleven varieties of salmon and trout from the mountains to the sea, the Park Service says, and they were an important food for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe along its banks. Two dams built in the early 1900s, the Elwha and the Glines Canyon, brought hydropower to the growing town of Port Angeles, but they blocked the fish, held back the river’s sediment and flooded the tribe’s historic homelands and cultural sites. Congress authorised their removal in the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act of 1992. After two decades of planning came the largest dam removal in US history, which began on 17 September 2011; six months later the Elwha Dam was gone, and the Glines Canyon Dam followed in 2014. The Park Service says the river once again flows freely from its headwaters to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and calls the Elwha a rare chance for scientists to learn what happens when salmon return to a wild, protected river.
Elk with a president’s name. Roosevelt elk once ranged from northern California to Vancouver Island, the Park Service says, and declined sharply with hunting in the late 1890s and early 1900s. President Grover Cleveland created a forest reserve here in 1897; in 1909 President Theodore Roosevelt redesignated part of it as Mount Olympus National Monument to preserve the elk’s native habitat, which is why the animals once called Olympic elk are now called Roosevelt elk; and in 1938 President Franklin Roosevelt signed the act that made it a national park. The Park Service says the park is home to the largest fully wild herd of Roosevelt elk in the Pacific Northwest, the largest variety of elk in North America, with bulls weighing up to 1,100 pounds.
The field notes
Trees on stilts
The rain forest floor is so densely covered that many seedlings never reach the soil, the Park Service explains: they germinate instead on fallen, decaying trees, called nurse logs, and send their roots down round the log to the ground. When the log eventually rots away, it leaves a colonnade, a row of trees standing on stilt-like roots over the space where it lay. The big trees here are mostly Sitka spruce and western hemlock; many are hundreds of years old, and the Park Service says they can reach 250 feet in height and 30 to 60 feet round. Dead wood can take centuries to decay, and through that slow end it shelters mosses, seedlings, fungi, small mammals, amphibians and insects.
The Hoh Rain Forest, the best known of the valleys, averages about 140 inches (3.55 metres) of rain a year, its Park Service page says. Where its name comes from is, in the Park Service’s word, up for debate: the page offers a Quileute word said to mean “fast moving water” or “snow water”, a Quinault word said to mean “boundary”, and a third reading, and concludes that the history behind the name appears to be lost.
Glaciers, counted twice
The Blue Glacier descends 2.6 miles from Mount Olympus and, in its fastest sections, moves about 3 feet a day, the Park Service says; it calls it one of the most studied glaciers in the world. The counts are less comfortable. In 1982 the park had 266 glaciers; a new inventory in 2009 found 184, and researchers comparing aerial photographs from the late 1970s with 2009 found a 34 per cent loss of glacier surface area in about 30 years. The Lillian Glacier disappeared completely between 1905 and 2010, and the Anderson Glacier, on Mount Anderson, was essentially gone by 2015. The park’s own figures today list 32 named glaciers.
After the fire at Staircase
Rain does not rule out fire here. The human-caused Bear Gulch Fire started on 6 July 2025 in Olympic National Forest above Lake Cushman, crossed into the park’s wilderness and became, the Park Service says, the largest wildland fire on the Olympic Peninsula since 1951; it was declared 100 per cent contained on 12 November 2025. After a year-long closure the Staircase developed area reopened in July 2026, but as read on 31 October 2026 the wilderness trails beyond it remain closed while crews assess hazards and repair bridges, and the Park Service warns of falling trees, rolling rocks and unstable ground in the burned areas.
Sea stacks and driftwood at Ruby Beach on the Olympic coast.
Photograph: National Park Service · Public domain · cropped
March 2015Giant green anemones and an ochre sea star in a tide pool at Ruby Beach.
Photograph: NPS Photo / C. Bubar · Public domain · cropped
November 2015Wildflowers on Hurricane Ridge, with the Olympic Mountains beyond.
Photograph: NPS Photo · Public domain · cropped
- Put the rain jacket on in the car park, not under the first big tree. The first big tree is lovely and keeps nobody dry.
- Give the elk the whole road and then some. They have the right of way and they know it.
- Go down to the cold beach as the tide drops, and look into the pools before you look at the view.
- These rivers and beaches had names and families long before the park did. Where a sign asks you to keep off, keep off.
- Keep the list in an inside pocket. (Kept it in an outside one. It is now growing a small moss of its own and looks better than it did before.)
A nurse log in the Hoh. Across the rain forest valleys of Olympic National Park, the National Park Service explains, the forest floor is so densely covered that many seedlings germinate instead on fallen, decaying trees, sending their roots down round the log into the ground. A big Sitka spruce or western hemlock can take centuries to decay, sheltering mosses, fungi, amphibians and insects as it goes; when the log finally rots away, the young trees are left standing in a straight row on stilt-like roots, a colonnade, over the space where it lay. The Park Service’s Hoh page asks visitors to look for the new growth sprouting on fallen trunks, and for the oddly straight lines of towering trees with space beneath their roots where a nurse log once gave them a start.
Tally, in the marginI admired a row of trees standing on tiptoe for some while before it dawned on me that they were standing on something that had left. The log had rotted away from under them and they had simply carried on, politely, as if nobody had moved the chair.
Getting there
How to get there. The Park Service names Seattle-Tacoma International as the closest major airport and says most of the park cannot be reached by public transport, so most visitors drive. From the I-5 corridor, Highway 101 runs around most of the peninsula and every part of the park is reached from it; Washington State Ferries cross Puget Sound to the peninsula, and the Coho ferry links Port Angeles with Victoria, British Columbia. The main visitor center is in Port Angeles. The Hoh Rain Forest lies on the west side, about a two-hour drive from Port Angeles and under an hour from Forks, at the end of the Upper Hoh Road, 18 miles from Highway 101. The Park Service warns that cell service is spotty, with little or none in the Hoh and on the beaches, and that a rental car which needs a cell signal to unlock is a poor choice here.
When to go. The park is open 24 hours a day all year, though some roads, campgrounds and facilities are seasonal. Most people come in summer, when the Park Service says the wait to enter Hurricane Ridge or the Hoh can be an hour or two, especially at weekends; it suggests May or September for shorter lines, and arriving early or late in the day. Travel between parts of the park can take from half an hour to four hours or more. As read on 31 October 2026, the Hurricane Ridge Road was closed and opens or closes with the weather, the Olympic Hot Springs Road in the Elwha valley has been closed to vehicles since a 2021 washout (it is open on foot and by bicycle), and the Upper Hoh Road was open. The Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center is open daily in summer and closed from January to early March.
What to arrange ahead. No reservation is needed to enter the park, the Park Service says, but anyone staying the night should book lodging, a campground or a wilderness permit, since campgrounds and motels fill quickly at summer weekends. The Park Service asks visitors to stay at least 100 feet from elk, and warns that elk can be aggressive in the September and early October rut and when defending calves. On the coast, its tides page warns that a rising tide can trap walkers; carry a tide table.
Safety. The State Department’s travel advisories cover other countries, so none applies here. The hazards are the park’s own: tides, cold water and drift logs on the beaches; changeable weather, which the Park Service says can differ across the park at the same moment; and, near Staircase, burned ground that it says may contain falling trees, loose boulders and stump holes. In an emergency, dial 911.
Mark this place
Common questions
Where is Olympic National Park?
Olympic National Park is on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, west of Seattle. Highway 101 runs around most of the peninsula and every part of the park is reached from it; the main visitor center is in Port Angeles, and the National Park Service names Seattle-Tacoma International as the closest major airport.
How big is Olympic National Park?
The National Park Service gives Olympic National Park’s area as 922,651 acres, of which 876,447 acres, 95 per cent, are congressionally designated wilderness. The park includes 73 miles of wilderness coast, 660 miles of trail and 171 miles of road, by the park’s own count.
How much rain falls in the Hoh Rain Forest?
The National Park Service gives the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park a yearly average of about 140 inches (3.55 metres) of rain. Across the park’s west-facing rain forest valleys, the Quinault, Queets, Hoh and Bogachiel, it puts annual precipitation at 140 to 167 inches, 12 to 14 feet.
Why are the elk in Olympic National Park called Roosevelt elk?
In 1909 President Theodore Roosevelt set aside part of the Olympic Forest Reserve as Mount Olympus National Monument to preserve the habitat of the peninsula’s elk, the National Park Service says, and the animals once called Olympic elk became Roosevelt elk in his honour. The park calls its herd the largest fully wild herd of Roosevelt elk in the Pacific Northwest.
What happened to the dams on the Elwha River?
The Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, built on the Elwha River in Olympic National Park in the early 1900s, were removed under a 1992 act of Congress. The National Park Service calls it the largest dam removal in US history: work began on 17 September 2011, the Elwha Dam was gone six months later, and the Glines Canyon Dam followed in 2014.
How many glaciers are there in Olympic National Park?
Olympic National Park had 266 glaciers in 1982 and 184 in a 2009 inventory, the National Park Service says, with a 34 per cent loss of glacier surface area between the late 1970s and 2009. The park’s current figures list 32 named glaciers; the Blue Glacier on Mount Olympus is one of the largest.
Do you need a reservation to visit Olympic National Park?
No. The National Park Service says no reservation is needed to enter Olympic National Park, which is open 24 hours a day all year. Visitors staying overnight need booked lodging, a campground site or a wilderness permit, and summer waits to enter Hurricane Ridge or the Hoh Rain Forest can reach an hour or two.
What is a nurse log?
A nurse log is a fallen, decaying tree on which seedlings germinate, as they do across the rain forest valleys of Olympic National Park, where the forest floor is too densely covered for many seeds. The young trees send roots down to the ground; when the log rots away, the National Park Service says, a row of trees on stilt-like roots, a colonnade, remains.
What to pack: the Road trips kit, cold and high