Hurricane Ridge

Life at Hurricane Ridge is shaped by wind and snow. Over 75 mile an hour gusts buffet the ridge, lending the name "Hurricane." The 30-35 feet of snow that falls annually lingers into summer, shaping life year-round. Its weight challenges trees; its persistence maintains open meadows.

The seemingly endless sea of mammoth trees along the Northwest coast always impressed early European and American explorers. Over the next thirty years, lumbering became a major industry for many coastal settlements on the Olympic Peninsula. The Timber and Stone Act of 1878 permitted and encouraged the clearing of land, with the act specifically designed to allow miners and settlers to obtain timber and building materials from undeveloped lands for construction on their sites.

Beginning in 1935, a series of bills were introduced in Congress proposing the creation of an Olympic National Park and suggesting various boundaries. Finally, after three years of lengthy public debate focused on the proper boundaries of a national park on the Peninsula, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law a bill establishing a 682,000 acre Olympic National Park. The newly formed Park was more than double the size of Mount Olympus National Monument and included extensive forested lands on the north and west previously included in Olympic National Forest.

Today, Hurricane Ridge is the most easily accessed mountain area within Olympic National Park. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were put to work improving or extending several roads on Forest Service land which included Hurricane Ridge. A Florida family was hiking in Olympic National Park when they discovered a piece of woven material at the edge of a snowfield near Hurricane Ridge. The woven piece turned out to be from a 2,900-year-old basket.