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Climbers on Paradise Glacier, sometime between 1911 and 1920. Curtis & Miller / Library of Congress.
Mount Rainier became a national park in 1899. It took another eighty-nine years for most of it to become legal wilderness — and long before either, it had been looked after by the people who lived around it. The history of wilderness at Rainier is less a single act than a slow agreement about how little to build on a mountain.
Before any designation
The mountain has given spiritual and physical sustenance to Indigenous people since time immemorial. Today they are represented by the park's six traditionally affiliated tribes — the Cowlitz, Muckleshoot, Nisqually, Puyallup, Squaxin Island and Yakama — and the Coast Salish people. Archeological evidence runs from the low river courses all the way to the subalpine and alpine landscapes, matching the traditional knowledge of elders: generations of stewardship, passed down as knowledge and practice, protected the mountain's character long before any law did.
From park to wilderness
| Year | Step |
|---|---|
| 1899 | Congress creates the nation's fifth national park, "for the preservation from injury or spoliation" of its timber, minerals and "natural curiosities, or wonders" |
| 1935 | local mountaineers first propose a "wilderness" in the park's roadless north, worried about damage |
| 1960s | park staff take up the idea as backcountry use rises |
| 1969 | The Mountaineers of Seattle publish recommendations on protecting the park's fragile areas |
| 1974 | an environmental impact statement and a first proposal to Congress: 210,700 acres. About 250 people attend the hearings in Longmire and Tacoma |
| mid-1980s | Superintendent Neal Guse adds 17,780 acres, wanting everything but the roads and developed areas protected |
| 1988 | the Washington Park Wilderness Act designates the Mount Rainier Wilderness, together with wilderness in North Cascades and Olympic |
Managing what was designated
The first Wilderness Management Plan, in 1989, used a "Limits of Acceptable Change" framework: indicators and standards to monitor, not a fixed picture to preserve. It removed several non-historic structures from the wilderness, closed sensitive camping areas, set use limits for cross-country and alpine zones, required permits for every overnight stay in the backcountry all year round, and limited group sizes. Amendments in 1990, 1991 and 1992 refined it.
Designation brought a tension of its own. In 1997 parts of the park became a National Historic Landmark District, which made some structures and trails — the Wonderland Trail among them — nationally significant historic properties inside the wilderness. Managers now balance two duties: keeping wilderness free of human works, and preserving the human works that are part of its history. The park's 2015 Foundation Document names wilderness as fundamental to its purpose and an updated Wilderness Stewardship Plan as a priority.
Sources
Written from the National Park Service's "History of Wilderness at Mount Rainier", a work of the United States government in the public domain, quoting the 1899 act creating the park and Title III of the Washington Park Wilderness Act (1988).
In these collectionsMount Rainier National Park
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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