OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — A renovated Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center will reopen Wednesday with its first new exhibits in six decades.
Visitor services will be curtailed Monday and Tuesday to allow staff to move equipment and materials back into the building, which is located at the end of Upper Hoh Road in the western portion of the park about 31 miles south of Forks.
Park staff will be available Monday and Tuesday in the visitor center parking area and nearby nature trails to answer questions and provide information while the visitor center itself remains closed.
Beginning Wednesday, the visitor center will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily throughout the summer. Ranger-led programs will resume Wednesday.
The visitor center, which gets about 170,000 visitors a year, was closed in September for the $1.14 million renovation, the first major remodeling of the center since it was opened in 1963.
A trailer set up in the parking lot with temporary restrooms has served visitors’ needs while work was in progress by Tactical Constructors Corp. and NLC General Inc. Joint Venture of Fife.
All of the exhibits, including an elk diorama, were to be replaced with displays on ecosystems and new scientific discoveries, Barb Maynes, park spokeswoman, said last fall.
The diorama was to be stored in the park’s historic collection.
The center was given a new roof and modified for wheelchair accessibility. The information desk was enlarged.
The building’s electrical, data-connection and heating-ventilation-air-conditioning system were upgraded.
The parking area and pathways were improved.
The center provides visitors with information and exhibits about visiting the North Olympic Peninsula’s west side, including park coastal and rain forest areas.
Several trails lead from the center: an interpretive trail adjacent to the facility, the 0.8-mile Hall of Mosses Trail, the 1.2-mile Spruce Nature and the 17.3-mile Hoh River Trail to Glacier Meadows.
The 88-site camping area includes fire pits with grates, picnic tables, potable water and a fee-accessible dump station for recreational vehicles.
The Hoh Rain Forest averages 12 to 14 feet of precipitation a year and is one of the park’s most popular attractions.