Alpenglow Ski Mountaineering History Project Home
Richard C. Berner - Seattle 1921-1940: From Boom to Bust
Chapter 15 - Conservation and Mountain Recreation Between the Wars
p. 268: "During the 1920s, two areas commanded primary attention of The Mountaineers. One was facilitating access to Mt Rainier National Park. The other was the Snoqualmie Pass region, including the trail system radiating from it..."
p. 270: In the 1920s, Asahel Curtis of the Mt Rainier Advisory Committee and the Rainier National Park administration were fixed on circling the mountain with a road. Rainier Park superintendent W.H. Peters favored a route passing over Spray Park. Curtis favored a low route that entailed a tunnel through Ipsut Pass.
p. 271: The author discusses arguments leading to the creation of Olympic National Park in 1938. "The USFS's insistence on managing all forest cover on a sustained yield basis--which was premised on the cutting of all timber--proved its undoing. Even the Forest Service's 'primitive' areas were planned for cutting in due time, though to be harvested theoretically on a sustained yield basis that, in turn, was based on the notion that the Forest Service could eventually manage the entire peninsula, including its private land." Asahel Curtis and the Seattle Chamber of Commerce opposed creation of a national park on the Olympic peninsula.
p. 275: When a proposal for a "Cascades Ice Peaks Park" was making the rounds in the late 1930s, the Chamber of Commerce and The Mountaineers both opposed it. At that time, as the USFS was completing the Cascade Crest Trail, skepticism of Forest Service management had not yet carried over from the Olympics to the Cascades.
p. 277: The author summarizes the development of skiing in the 1920s and 1930s, but there is nothing noteworthy here.
Endnotes
p. 491, Note 3: In the 1920s, Everett Griggs [probably Sr.] was president of the St. Paul and Tacoma Lumber Company.
p. 493, Note 18: "The [Seattle] Chamber of Commerce, through the lobbying of trustee Darwin Meisnest, was instrumental in getting the Olympic Games tryouts, assisted by its Tacoma counterpart."
Return to the Alpenglow Ski Mountaineering History Project home page