North Cascade National Park

The North Cascades National Park is one of the largest national parks in all of Washington and contains tons of wonderful natural sites. The region forms part of the Cascade Range, named for its innumerable waterfalls. The North Cascades National Park contained over 318 Glaciers at one point and is full of beautiful meadows, mountains and those glaciers. The wildness and ruggedness of the park especially lures hikers, backpackers, and mountaineers.It is one of the most beautiful places to j=hike and rock climb in all of the Pacific Northwest. It has even been named the “American Alps” by the hikers and mountaineers because of the massive glaciated volcanoes that span across the range. (NatGeo)

History –

North Cascades National Park came into being, officially, on 02 Oct 1968, when Lyndon B. Johnson signed the North Cascades Act. This act created the North Cascades National Park Service Complex which comprised of 684,000 acres of wild land. It also included the park’s north and south units, as well as Ross Lake and Lake Chelan national recreation areas. This same act created the adjacent Pasayten Wilderness of 550,000 acres and enlarged the Glacier Peak Wilderness to 464,000 acres. In 1988 Congress designated approximately 93 percent of the three areas as the Stephen Mather Wilderness to provide additional legislated protection. The Cascades were among the world’s greatest mountain ranges. Extending from Canada’s Fraser River south beyond Oregon, they contribute greatly to shaping the Pacific Northwest’s climate and vegetation. (NorthCascades)

Early settlers arrived in the foothills of the North Cascades in the latter half of the 19th century, and utilized the range in a limited way as a source of timber and grazing land. However, the range is so rugged that this exploitation was less dramatic than in other more gentle landscapes. It was originally used to mine gold and silver and was very prosperous in doing so.