Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park protects nearly one million acres of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Established in 1938, it is famous for its "three-in-one" landscape, which includes the glaciated Olympic Mountains, temperate rainforests, and the Pacific coastline.

Step into the emerald world: Click and drag to take a close look at the three ecosystems.

These Olympic mountains are unique because they were pushed up from the bottom of the ocean millions of years ago. The highest peak is Mount Olympus, which is covered in thick glaciers.

Because it snows so much here, these glaciers stay frozen even in the summer. At Hurricane Ridge, you can see wide-open meadows filled with wildflowers and animals like the Olympic marmot, which lives only on this peninsula.

On the west side of the mountains, it rains almost every day. This creates the Hoh Rain Forest, one of the wettest places in the United States. The trees here, like the Sitka spruce, can grow over 300 feet tall. A special part of this forest is the moss.

In the "Hall of Mosses," the plants hang down like green curtains, making the forest feel quiet and ancient.

The park also protects 73 miles of Pacific coastline. This isn't a typical sandy beach for swimming; it is a rocky, powerful shore. You will see sea stacks, which are giant rock towers standing alone in the ocean.

At Ruby Beach, giant logs from the forest wash up on the shore, bleached white by the sun and salt. When the tide goes out, you can find tiny sea creatures like purple starfish and green anemones in the rocky pools.

In 2011, the National Park Service began the largest dam removal project in the world. By 2014, both structures were gone, allowing the Elwha River to run free from the mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca for the first time in 100 years. This project allowed salmon to return.

Olympic National Park is a special sanctuary for plants and animals that can’t be found anywhere else on Earth. By protecting the land from the ocean all the way to the mountain tops, the park keeps the Pacific Northwest looking exactly as it did hundreds of years ago.