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Lewis and Clark State Park preserves precious remnants of once-common southwest Washington landscapes along a historic Indigenous travel route.

Indigenous Lands

The park lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation. For thousands of years this area has provided habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures.

A Spit of Land

The formation of a sand spit extending outward from a headland requires three things:

An Underground Wonderland

Crawford State Park Heritage Site preserves Gardner Cave, one of the largest limestone caverns in Washington. The cave is adorned with fantastic and delicate natural decorations that have formed over thousands of years.

The Bay of Despond

Today’s Jarrell Cove State Park was covered by glacial ice during the most recent ice age. The fingerlike waterways of South Puget Sound including the inverted Y shape of Jarrell Cove and Pickering Passage outside its entrance were excavated by highly pressurized meltwater streams that developed as the thousands-of-feet-thick ice began to melt. The park’s namesake cove features deep waters and a tall tidal range. Low tides yield extensive muddy banks.

The Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail weaves together a diverse parade of landscapes filled with stories of land and people. The trail stretches much of the way across today’s Washington, from shrub-steppe and farmlands of the Palouse country on the eastern edge of the state, across the Columbia River, and up and through the Cascade Mountains to the lowlands surrounding Puget Sound.