The entire Olympic Peninsula features 2,132,324 acres of public federal lands, 632,324 operated as Olympic National Forest, and 1.5 million as Olympic National Park. The Olympic National Forest began as a 1.5 million acre Forest Reserve in 1897. It became a national park in 1938 under Franklin D. Roosevelt and the coastal wilderness was added in 1953. The Olympic National Park is a Biosphere Reserve and also a World Heritage Park, and 95% is officially designated as wilderness.
Mount Olympus rises 7965 feet above the sea which is mere miles away
The Hoh Rain Forest gets 14 feet of rain annually, more than anywhere else in the continental U. S., and Mount Olympus gets more than 200 inches of precipitation each year. Olympic National Park is one of the last remaining temperate rain forests in the world. Its Sitka spruce trees and western Hemlock trees can reach 300 feet in height and 23 feet in circumference. Douglas fir, bigleaf maple, vine maple, red alder, and black cottonwood are also found throughout the forest. Nearly every bit of space is taken up with a living plant, some of which even live on other plants (like mosses, lichens, and ferns.) Fifty-seven miles of coastline and numerous offshore islands combine with heavily forested, rugged mountain slopes, alpine meadows, and glaciers (60 of them) capped mountains.
There are 58l miles of trails which traverse virgin forests and along stream banks, crossing ridgelines and mountain passes. Hundreds of miles of additional trails are on adjoining Olympic National Forest lands. A backpacking permit is required and in 2000 a fee was charged - $5 plus $2 per person per night, with maximum caps set for larger groups. No license is required for fishing within the park, but steelhead trout and salmon punch cards are required in season.
The park contains over 1200 varieties of plants, over 300 species of birds, and over 70 species of mammals. At least 8 kinds of plants and 18 kinds of animals are found only in the Olympic Peninsula and nowhere else in the world. The park has the largest intact stand of coniferous forest in the contiguous United States and the largest wild herd (6500) of Roosevelt elk (named for Teddy Roosevelt.) Black bears are present but no grizzlies. Blacktail deer, Olympic marmots and squirrels, bald eagles, and mountain goats also populate the park.