OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Park officials will celebrate the 75th anniversary of Olympic National Park — and the local residents who use and support it — at an open house from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
The event will be at the park’s visitor center at 3002 Mount Angeles Road, hosted by ONP Superintendent Sarah Creachbaum and members of the park’s staff.
No formal remarks or presentations are planned.
The public open house is “in celebration and gratitude for area communities’ support and collaboration during the 75-year history of Olympic National Park,” Creachbaum said in a statement.
The park was founded with the signing of a bill by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 29, 1938.
As defined in the bill establishing the park, the purpose of Olympic National Park is to:
“Preserve for the benefit, use and enjoyment of the people, the finest sample of primeval forests of Sitka spruce, western hemlock, Douglas fir, and western red cedar in the entire United States; to provide suitable winter range and permanent protection for the herds of native Roosevelt elk and other wildlife indigenous to the area; to conserve and render available to the people, for recreational use, this outstanding mountainous country, containing numerous glaciers and perpetual snow fields and a portion of the surrounding verdant forest together with a narrow string along the beautiful Washington coast.”
Olympic National Park protects 922,651 acres of three distinctly different ecosystems: rugged glacier-capped mountains, more than 70 miles of wild Pacific coast and magnificent stands of old-growth and temperate rain forest.
More information about Olympic National Park, including images and a timeline tracking its first 75 years, is available at the park’s website, www.nps.gov/olym.
