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Old newspapers, pinned to the places they wrote about — the streets you can still walk today.
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In 1894, scientists and mountaineers asked Congress to protect Mount Rainier as a national park—while carefully carving out the coal fields and leaving railroad passes open.
“This grand mountain is not, like Mont Blanc, merely the dominant peak of a chain of snow mountains; it is the only snow peak in view.”
In 1870, Hazard Stevens and P. B. Van Trump reached Mount Rainier's summit after a brutal 10½-hour climb, then spent a freezing night beside volcanic steam vents.
“They passed a most miserable night, freezing on one side and in a hot sulphur bath on the other.”
When Mount Rainier seemed to erupt in 1894, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer sent Maj. E. S. Ingraham and five companions up the Carbon River in deep winter to find out what was really happening.
“Looking east, the canyon ended abruptly and between a rift in the mountains Mount Rainier towered almost to the sky.”
Seven homing pigeons carried dispatches from Mount Rainier's slopes, disproving the era's altitude limits and delivering word that the volcano was steaming.
“The message that this bird carried from an altitude of 9,000 feet was delivered at its home loft, some fifty miles distant from Mount Rainier, in but little over two hours after the message was written, and reported in the Post-Intelligencer the next morning, bringing the startling news that Mount Rainier was smoking and steaming.”
A mountain party finds their camp transformed into an eerie, glowing scene during an alpine electrical storm.
“Chancing to raise our hands we were surprised to see our finger nails illuminated and a slight tingling sensation as the electricity passed down our arms.”
In December 1895, a Post-Intelligencer party climbed to 9,000 feet, reported smoke and steam from the summit, and left the public demanding proof that Washington's sentinel was an active volcano.
“They report having seen smoke and steam rising from the summit, and are very positive in their belief that the mountain is an active volcano.”
Two members of a Seattle climbing party return from Mount Rainier after the rest push on to the summit, where they plan to camp amid volcanic steam and signal the city with bonfires.
“If they camped on Crater Peak, and they must have, the steam constantly issuing from the crater would keep them warm.”
A Seattle climbing party returns from Mount Rainier after a storm-bound night in the summit ice caves—and Tacoma greets them like a circus.
“We spent twenty-six hours on the summit, fourteen of which it snowed, hailed and blew so hard and so cold that most of the party hid away in the ice caves of the crater.”
In 1894, Major Ingraham led six men, seven homing pigeons, and a camera onto Mount Rainier’s glaciers. They came back with frostbite, a story of steam and smoke rising from the crater—and one pigeon missing.
““See the smoke! See the steam!””
A local professor and two students discovered steam-filled caverns and potential new plant species while spending a harrowing night inside the crater of Mount Rainier.
“At an unknown depth there was a body of water. This was discovered by throwing pebbles down and hearing them splash.”
Major Ingraham's party leaves Seattle for three weeks on the mountain, hoping to name glaciers, test mineral springs, and locate a smoking volcano seen from the foothills.
“There is also a small volcano on the main range... from which smoke has been seen issuing by people living in the foothills and at Ellensburg, and which has never been reached or definitely located.”
A new summit reading revived a two-year-old claim: Olympia’s Dr. Riley had used three government barometers to put Mount Rainier near 15,000 feet—well above the official 14,444.
“In order to be on the safe side, Dr. Riley took the lowest as the probable height of the mountain.”
Defying widespread reports that Mount Rainier had been rendered impassable by avalanches, two men successfully summit the peak to set the record straight.
“They experienced great difficulty and underwent much peril in clinging to the rocks and working their way along its surface.”
A Wallula newspaper reports a strange, massive slide that left a mile-wide track across the face of the mountain.
“To have been so clearly defined, and at such a great distance, the width of the track must have been several miles.”
A letter from Yelm corrects the record: five people had already stood atop Mount Rainier's north peak, and two had left a lead plate and tin reflector on the rock.
“We stood on the icy apex of the peak, and, before we descended, deposited on the bare rock below Liberty Cap a leaden plate with our names carved on it, and a tin plate reflector wired to the rock.”
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