North Cascades National Park

Park Information

• Date Established: October 2, 1968
• Location: Northern Washington State
• Area: 684,000 acres

Overview

North Cascades National Park is a federally protected wilderness area in northern Washington State. The park is famous for its snow-capped mountains, dense forests, and hundreds of lakes and streams. It is also home to more than three hundred glaciers, more than any other national park outside of Alaska. Because of its unique geography, the western side of North Cascades National Park has a different climate than the eastern side. The park is part of the larger Cascade Mountains, a mountain chain that runs from British Columbia through northern California. The Cascades are often called the North American Alps because of their resemblance to the European Alps, a mountain range that runs through parts of France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.

North Cascades National Park is part of a larger park complex that includes two recreation areas—Ross Lake National Recreation Area and Lake Chelan National Recreation Area. The entire park complex covers about 1,070 square miles (2,771 square kilometers). Despite being relatively close to Seattle—it is about 110 miles (177 kilometers) to the northeast—the park is mostly remote, rugged wilderness and is popular with campers, climbers, and hikers. According to the National Park Service, 30,154 people visited North Cascades National Park in 2022. The two recreation areas were more popular with visitors, attracting more than 900,000 people.

History

Humans are believed to have first inhabited the Cascade Mountains region at least as far back as eight thousand years ago. For centuries, several native peoples—the Upper Skagit, Chelan, Nooksack, Chilliwack, and Lower Thompson—hunted and fished in the area and created a thriving system of trade that connected the Columbia River basin to the east and the Puget Sound lowlands in the west. They traversed the mountains by a pass they called Stehekin, or “the way through.” Near what would later be named Lake Chelan, the Chelan people left behind symbolic drawings of human figures and animals in the surrounding cliffs.

European fur traders and trappers began arriving in the region in the late eighteenth century. Alexander Ross, a Scottish fur trapper, was the first European to explore the mountains within the park boundaries in 1814. His attempt to survey the area and find a path over the Cascades proved so daunting, he remarked that a “more difficult route to travel never fell to man’s lot.” Miners arrived in the region by the late nineteenth century, but they found little gold in the remote mountains. Although the area was opened to settlement by the 1840s, the harsh landscape kept out most settlers until the 1870s and 1880s.

During the twentieth century, the North Cascades region became a popular recreation area and gained a reputation as a sought-after destination for mountain climbers. The region was placed in the Washington Forest Reserve in 1897, and an unsuccessful attempt to name it a national park was made in 1906. Preservationists lobbied for decades to have the region declared a national park, but to no avail. By the mid-twentieth century, however, concern began to grow that logging operations could begin to target the forests of the North Cascades. A renewed push for a national park finally paid off in 1968 when Congress voted to grant North Cascades national park status. The measure was signed on October 2, 1968, by President Lyndon Johnson.

Geology and Ecology

The Cascades were formed from the collisions of slowly moving sections of the earth’s crust known as plates. The collisions crumpled and folded the rock at the edge of the plates, piling it into mountain ranges about thirty-five million years ago. Many of those early mountains eroded over time; the modern Cascades were formed about five to six million years ago. The southern end of the range is known as the High Cascades. Many of these peaks are volcanic and reach heights of more than 10,000 feet (3,048 meters). The North Cascades are not active volcanoes and tend to be smaller, averaging about 7,000 to 8,000 feet (2,134 to 2,438 meters). The tallest mountain within the boundaries of North Cascades National Park is Goode Mountain at 9,206 feet (2,806 meters).

Spread among the park’s mountain peaks are deep, forested valleys, some of which fall to about 400 feet (122 meters) above sea level. The park features an abundance of waterfalls, although many of these can only be reached by hikers willing to venture into the more remote areas of the park. The more than three hundred glaciers in North Cascades National Park feed hundreds of lakes and thousands of miles of rivers and streams. One of those rivers, the Skagit River and its tributaries, is the largest watershed that flows into Puget Sound.

The geography of North Cascades National Park creates a distinct climate division between the park’s eastern and western halves. Moisture-laden air that blows in off the Pacific Ocean reaches the mountains, where it rises and condenses into rain. The western side of the park receives about 110 inches (279 centimeters) of rain annually. This wet climate allows for the growth of large forests of Douglas firs, hemlocks, and red cedars. Some of these forests can be hundreds of years old. As the rising air dumps most of its rain on the western side of the park, the air that makes it over the mountains is considerably drier. The eastern side of the park, which receives about 35 inches (89 centimeters) of rain annually, is home to smaller pine trees and sagebrush.

Hundreds of mammal, fish, and bird species inhabit North Cascades National Park. Bears, gray wolves, wolverines, and black-tailed deer are just some of the seventy-five mammal species in the park. The more than two hundred species of birds include rare predators such as the bald eagle and osprey. In addition to about twenty-eight species of fish, the park also contains about twenty-one species of reptiles and amphibians as well as more than five hundred different types of insects.

Bibliography

Danner, Lauren. Crown Jewel Wilderness: Creating North Cascades National Park. Washington State U P, 2017.

Fogel, Elise. “President Johnson Signs Bill Creating North Cascades National Park on October 2, 1968.” History Link, 29 Mar. 2011, www.historylink.org/File/9789. Accessed 8 Dec. 2024.

“The North Cascades Are Calling!” National Park Service, 18 Oct. 2024, www.nps.gov/noca/index.htm. Accessed 8 Dec. 2024.

“North Cascades Geology.” United States Geological Survey, 13 Dec. 2016, geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/noca/nocageol1.html. Accessed 8 Dec. 2024.

“North Cascades National Park.” National Park Foundation, www.nationalparks.org/explore-parks/north-cascades-national-park. Accessed 8 Dec. 2024.

Oswald, Michael Joseph. “North Cascades.” Your Guide to the National Parks: The Complete Guide to All 59 National Parks. Stone Road Press, 2017, pp. 601–08.

“Venture into the Wild ‘American Alps.’” National Geographic, 2018, www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national-parks/north-cascades-national-park/. Accessed 8 Dec. 2024.