The Log Arch at the Nisqually Gate
Near Ashford, Washington
Just ahead, the road passes beneath a massive arch of rough hewn logs. This is the Nisqually Entrance, the oldest and most historic gateway into Mount Rainier National Park, and for most visitors the first real threshold of the mountain. The original arch was raised in nineteen eleven, five years before the National Park Service even existed.
In an era when a new national park had to prove it was real, a grand timber gateway like this announced that you were entering protected ground, a place set apart. The heavy logs echo the old growth forest all around you and set the tone for everything beyond. In the nineteen thirties, the young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps came through during the Great Depression and left their mark across the park.
They rehabilitated the entrance station, cleared and built trails, laid stone, and planted vegetation, doing much of the patient handwork that gives the Nisqually area its rustic, timeless feeling. The buildings clustered here now form the Nisqually Entrance Historic District. As you roll under the arch, you are following the same route that early tourists took by wagon and by some of the first automobiles ever allowed into an American national park.
