Olympic National Park, the Olympic Assessment

Résumé

Jagged, glacier-capped mountains, luxuriant forests, and rugged coastline dominate the landscape of Olympic National Park, centered on western Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. To protect its wild qualities, Congress designated approximately 95 percent of the park’s 922,651 acres as wilderness in 1988. The park is divided into two units—most of the acreage encompasses the Olympic Mountains and old-growth forests of the interior of the peninsula, but a narrow band of parkland lies along the coast, separated from the rest of the park by state, private, and Forest Service land. This strip of Pacific coastline— about 65 miles long—is one of the largest stretches of protected wilderness coast in the contiguous United States and provides protection for flocks of sea birds and myriad marine organisms.