OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Can you speak Klallam?
If not, Olympic National Park is erecting entrance signs that translate a Klallam phrase into “welcome.”
A sign is going up now at the park’s main visitor center at 3002 Mount Angeles Road that was designed by the park’s landscape architect Jack Galloway in consultation with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.
The $81,850 project, constructed by HCS, Inc. of Chehalis, is part of a larger plan which installed signs at Rialto Beach in February 2016 and on the North and South Shore Roads of Lake Quinault in March 2016.
In addition, a new entrance sign will be installed at Lake Crescent during the Lake Crescent Highway 101 Rehabilitation Project in the spring of 2018.
The signs, funded by park entrance fee revenue, seem to take a page from the city of Port Angeles, which in early 2016, installed street signs downtown at the intersections of Oak and Front streets and Oak Street and Railroad Avenue with the names inscribed in both English and Klallam.
The new entrance sign at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center is expected to be completed with a river rock base and hand-peeled log support structure prior to Memorial Day.
An additional component of this project will be minor directional sign improvements.
A paved trail from the Olympic National Park Visitor Center will provide access to the entrance sign for visitors who want to take photographs.
