A Bit of History

Remarkably, the Olympic Mountains remained a mystery to early European settlers of the Pacific Northwest until an exploratory expedition in 1890 ascended the roaring rivers and crossed the sharp peaks.

Among members of the wilderness team was Louis F. Henderson, a talented 37-year-old renaissance man typical of explorers of the Victorian era. Henderson, a graduate of Cornell University, was a botanist and linguist and Shakespearian actor. Following the adventure of his life through the Olympics, he was commissioned to organize an exhibit of native plants and trees for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Henderson later was elected to the prestigious Academy of Sciences. He continued climbing into his eighties and when 70 swam across the Columbia River at Hood River, Ore.

“A more magnificent scene had never presented itself to my eyes, and I doubt whether anything in the higher Alps or the grand ice-mountains of Alaska could outrival that view,” Henderson would write. “Canyon mingled with canyon, peak rose above peak, ridge succeeded ridge, until they culminated in old Olympus far to the northwest; snow, west, north and south; the fast-descending sun bringing out the gorgeous colorings of pale-blue, lavender, purple, ash, pink and gold. Add to this the delightful warmth of a summer sun in these altitudes–the awful stillness broken every now and then by the no less awful thunder of some distance avalanche…”–T.P