Washington

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Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park

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Seattle is a fascinating city, and this park offers a free walking tour of the Pioneer Square Historic District which teaches you about how the city overcame various challenges to grow. But the focus here is on the Gold Rush of 1897. To just report the numbers, 100,000 people rushed off to find gold, 70,000 bought supplies in Seattle, 40,000 reached the Klondike (mid-border of Alaska and Canada), 20,000 tried prospecting, 300 ‘struck it rich’ finding over $500,000 in gold, and only about 50 didn’t waste their money away digging for more. So the store above represents the only real winners of the rush, Seattle’s merchants. The stories are fascinating, although darkly tragic in many cases.

There’s another section of the park on Bainbridge Island across from Seattle, which is a memorial to the first US citizens of Japanese descent to be forcibly removed from their homes and sent to Manzanar and Minidoka. There is a beautiful cedar and stone memorial wall there along with names of the ‘interns’ and origami cranes, each representing a fragment of hope that a wish comes true. More than in some other places, many of the victims returned to their homes after the war. The main Klondike visitor center in Seattle also has a small exhibit about this American experience.

Lake Chelan National Recreation Area

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The Stehekin River in Washington state naturally formed a lake before emptying into the Columbia River, but a small dam was added to raise the water level. To get to the park, you have to take the 1.5 hour ferry ride from the resort town of Chelan (shuh-LAN, rhymes with man), which can be done as a day trip with layovers from 1.5 to 6 hours, or else you have to hike in on the Pacific Crest Trail or some other route, likely overnight through Grizzly territory. The ferry is the best way to get a look at the whole, long lake, including a large stretch of fire damage. I recommend bicycling, but the ferry company doesn’t allow bicycles on some boats, perhaps to aid their bicycle rental business at the arrival dock. Wenatchee Washington is a 45 minute drive south of Chelan, but its hotels are half the price.

Along with Lake Ross, this park is part of the North Cascades Complex, three distinct contiguous park units established simultaneously, so technically I visited all three by EV when I stopped at the main visitor center. The remote village of Stehekin is worth spending some time exploring, as they have a museum, a lodge with restaurant, a couple gift shops, a traditional apple orchard with free-pick-your-own in the fall, and an excellent bakery. Lodging, campgrounds and seats on the ferry do fill up, so reservations are wise. There are also very scenic hikes along the glacial river and above the glacial lake. Due to lack of easy access, the park has a relaxed old-timey feel to it, where folks wave as they pass on the road and people seem to slow down to enjoy themselves. But don’t miss your return ferry, which leaves promptly.

Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area

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A couleé is an old French Canadian word meaning a flow, such as a spring creek that carves out a gully. Roughly 15,000 years ago the giant glacial Missoula Lake melted, ice dams broke and the floods carved a giant gorge here. The Columbia River used to roll on through the grand couleé until the giant dam was built, providing power and irrigation to an extensive area. FDR approved the project, so the man made lake that stretches all the way back into Canada is named after him. The dam has a museum showing old propaganda films about how wonderful dams are. The 12 bands of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation couldn’t stop the dam, but now they own the lake and co-manage it with the park service. They also hold ceremonies to ask for the return of the salmon.

Fort Spokane—rhymes with ‘man’—has an old school built to force Native American children to be like white kids, and it still hosts Buffalo soldier descendant reunions. The fort is also part of the Nez Perce story, as Chief Joseph and refugees were forced to winter here, receiving some emergency supplies from a trading post named Fort Colville after the governor of the Hudson Bay Company, and some Nez Perce are still here. Many Chinese settled here when there were mining camps, but then they were excluded from immigrating by law, driven out of many northwest communities and massacred in at least a few cases.

There’s a scenic drive up the northeast coast of the lake, past farms, a ferry and a few boat launches. The town of Colville is mostly underwater now, but the mission remains on park grounds. I hiked a few miles looking for the remains of the original townsite of Kettle Falls that was moved to accommodate the lake. There was some fire damage and fireweed blooming, and there’s a large plywood operation nearby. I found the wetlands above between the park service campgrounds and a day use area. There were many geese around here, a few hikers, and I disturbed a large white-tail deer on the trail. It was hot in July, but cooler in Washington state than most of the country.