Mount Rainier: Tahoma, the Mountain That Is God

The Muckleshoot, Puyallup, and Nisqually peoples call it Tahoma, a word that translates variously as "the mountain that is God," "the great snowy peak," or "higher than a cloud." It has been present in their world since before any language existed to describe it. The United States government named it for Rear Admiral Peter Rainier of the British Royal Navy, who never saw it, never visited the Pacific Northwest, and is best remembered today by the name of this mountain.

The park was established in eighteen ninety-nine, making it the fifth-oldest national park in the United States. Its establishment came without consultation with the Muckleshoot, Puyallup, or Nisqually, whose eighteen fifty-five treaties explicitly reserved hunting and gathering rights across their territories. The park designation overrode those rights without a separate legal process. Contemporary co-management agreements between the tribes and the National Park Service represent a partial and contested restoration of that relationship.

Tahoma rises fourteen thousand four hundred eleven feet, the highest peak in Washington and the most heavily glaciated mountain in the contiguous United States. It holds twenty-six named glaciers covering approximately thirty-five square miles. Many are retreating; the glaciers have lost roughly a quarter of their area since the nineteen fifties. The mountain is also a stratovolcano, the same type as Mount St. Helens, and the USGS classifies it as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the large populations living within reach of its potential lahars, volcanic mudflows that would follow river valleys at high speed.

The name Tahoma has been formally proposed for restoration multiple times. The state of Washington has not acted on it.