Olympic National Park: Encyclopedia II - Olympic National Park - Human history

Olympic National Park - Human history

Prior to the influx of European settlers, Olympic's human population consisted of Native Americans, whose use of the peninsula consisted mainly of fishing and hunting. However, recent reviews of the record, coupled with systematic archaeological surveys of the mountains (Olympic and other Northwest ranges) are pointing to much more extensive tribal use of especially the subalpine meadows than seemed formerly to be the case. Most if not all Pacific Northwest indigenous cultures were more or less severely adversely affected by European diseases (often decimated) and other factors, well before ethnographers, business operations and settlers arrived in the region, so what they saw and recorded was a much-reduced native culture-base. Large numbers of cultural sites are now identified in the Olympic mountains, and important artifacts have been found.

When settlers began to appear, the use of the peninsula (as with much of the Pacific Northwest) shifted toward harvesting of timber, which began heavily in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There wasn't much dissent against the logging until the 1920s, when people got their first glimpses of the clear-cut hillsides where trees had been logged. (The 1920s saw an explosion of people's interest in the outdoors; this occurred because the automobile allowed people to tour previously-remote places like the Olympic Peninsula.)

The formal record of a proposal for a new national park on the Olympic Peninsula begins with the expeditions of well-known figures Lieutenant Joseph O'Neil and Judge James Wickersham, during the 1890s. These notables met in the Olympic wilderness while exploring, and subsequently combined their political efforts to have the area placed within some protected status. Following unsuccessful efforts in the Washington State Legislature in the early 1900s, President Theodore Roosevelt created Mount Olympus National Monument in 1909, primarily to protect the subalpine calving grounds and summer range of the Roosevelt elk herds native to the Olympics.

Public desire for preservation of some of the area grew until President Roosevelt declared ONP a national park in 1938. Even after ONP was declared a park, though, illegal logging continued in the park, and political battles continue to this day over the incredibly valuable timber contained within its boundaries. Logging continues on the Olympic Peninsula, but not within the park. A book detailing the history of the fight for ONP's timber is Olympic Battleground: The Power Politics of Timber Preservation by Carsten Lien.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Human history", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki