Mount Rainier National Park Created

President William McKinley signed legislation creating Mount Rainier National Park in central Washington. The nearly 365-square-mile area of pristine forests and spectacular alpine scenery was the fifth national park designated by Congress.

Called Tacoma (or Tahoma) by generations of Northwest Native Americans, Mount Rainier was named after Admiral Peter Rainier in 1792 by English explorer George Vancouver, who sighted the enormous 14,410-foot volcanic peak while exploring Puget Sound.

Nearly a century later, famed naturalist John Muir visited the Rainier region and later recommended that it be designated as a national park. Muir was particularly impressed with the magnificent wildflowers that blanket the mountain during the warm months of the year.

Mount Rainier National Park was the nation's fifth national park. Established by an act of Congress in 1899, it followed Yellowstone in 1872 and Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant National Parks in 1890. Mount Rainier had a significant part in the founding of the National Park System. Even more than the three California parks which preceded it, Mount Rainier National Park served to differentiate the idealistic purposes of national parks from the more utilitarian functions of national forests, or "forest reserves" as they were known at the time. As the first national park established after the founding of the national forest system in the 1890s, Mount Rainier demonstrated that the emerging national park idea was not to be subsumed by the burgeoning conservation movement, whose central goal was to increase efficiency in the use and development of the nation's resources. The establishment of Mount Rainier National Park reaffirmed the nation's intent to set aside certain areas of outstanding scenic and scientific value for the enjoyment of present and future generations. The arguments that were marshalled in support of Mount Rainier National Park during the 1890s helped shape the national park idea at a crucial time.

The legislation which established the park was in some ways precedent-setting. Mount Rainier was the first national park to be created from lands that were already set aside as forest reserves, forming a precedent for numerous national parks established in the twentieth century. Lands within the park boundary which had been granted to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company were reclaimed under the act in order to make the national park whole. This insistence on federal ownership of the land became another hallmark of American national parks in the twentieth century. In other respects, the act which created Mount Rainier National Park followed the Yellowstone prototype and reinforced an emerging pattern of national park legislation. For these reasons,...