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Kanaskat-Palmer State Park borders the Green River at the upper end of the Green River Gorge, a unique place where sandstone bedrock, covered by glacial deposits in most of the Puget Sound lowlands, is revealed by the downcutting of the river through the formation. Seams of coal interwoven with the sandstone fueled a local mining industry in the early 20th century.

“May These Gates Never Be Closed”

The inscription inside the east wall of the Peace Arch monument has a simple message: the highest goal between great nations should be perfect peace.  This 67-foot-tall structure of concrete on a steel frame was financed and constructed under the direction of lawyer, financier, road builder and humanitarian Sam Hill.

Maryhill State Park provides recreational opportunities on a landscape that has hosted a wide diversity of human endeavors over the ages. The park is located in the eastern gateway to the Columbia River Gorge, which features some of the most dramatic scenery in Washington.

The Columbia River Gorge

The Columbia River Gorge is a product of geologic processes that have affected much of today’s Washington State.

Beach with a view

Scenic Beach State Park is rooted in the era of automobile tourist camps that sprung up around Washington’s inland waterways in the 1920s as car ownership became widespread. Its location on the eastern shore of Hood Canal, with views across the water to the soaring peaks of the Olympic Mountains is highlighted in the spring and early summer with blooming native rhododendrons.

The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission is committed to telling the full story of events that are significant to each park. Despite limitations in the historical record, we have tried to represent the best information available to us. Our efforts to interpret the past are an ongoing process and as such, these stories will be updated over time. Our ongoing relationship-building and collaboration with Tribes and others will inform this work.

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.

The 130-mile Columbia Plateau State Park Trail weaves together a diverse parade of landscapes filled with stories of land and people along the route of the abandoned Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway. The trail stretches through a swath of today’s eastern Washington, from ponderosa pine forests near Spokane across the volcanic “scablands” and into the deep canyon of the Snake River.

James Island Marine State Park preserves an entire island on the western side of Rosario Strait. Its two forested hills rise more than 200 feet above a low isthmus. Rock outcrops on its rugged shore reveal that the bedrock of the island was formed deep on the ocean floor and uplifted above the water’s surface by the forces of plate tectonics.  

Saddlebag Island Marine State Park lies on the western side of Padilla Bay in a chain of four small islands extending southeast from the corner of Guemes Island. It shares an unusual geologic history with Hope Island, another Washington Marine State Park about ten miles south, and Cypress Island, a Natural Resources Conservation Area six miles west.

Manchester State Park is located on the site of a military reservation established for the defense of Puget Sound in 1899. The solid bedrock exposed at Middle Point in the park is an unusual feature on the Puget Sound coastline, found only at Rich Passage and a few areas on the western shore of Hood Canal. In the rest of the region, most bedrock is buried under a blanket of glacial debris left behind by the glaciers of the last ice age.

Lime Kiln Point State Park provides an opportunity for park visitors to view orca whales from shore in an area with connections to the cultural stories of the picturesque San Juan Islands.

Suspect Terranes

The bedrock landscape of the San Juan Islands is made of assemblages of rocks called terranes that have been thrust over one another like a stack of cards by tectonic forces.

Washington’s largest state park envelops the summit and slopes of 5,887-foot Mount Spokane. The park’s roads, trails and ski runs provide access to a wide variety of habitats, from old growth forests to the splintered rock fields and meadows at the mountain’s peak. The summit features the historic Vista House, built as an emergency relief project in 1933 using blocks of the mountain’s native granite.

Olallie State Park preserves the heritage of the South Fork Snoqualmie River Valley and its uses as a travel corridor across today’s Washington State. The river runs through the park, creating its biggest attractions where it cascades over the bedrock at 77-foot Weeks Falls and 230-foot Twin Falls. The two waterfalls are also the sites of the only hydroelectric developments in Washington State Parks.

Monticello Convention State Park Heritage Site commemorates two meetings attended by Euro-American men that helped set in motion the establishment of the Washington Territory.

Despite the fact that the territory had fewer than 4,000 settlers, the petitions ultimately succeeded in influencing the passage of legislation establishing the Territory of Washington, approved by President Millard Fillmore on March 2, 1853.

The End of Hood Canal

Belfair State Park features a popular stretch of beach between the mouths of Big Mission Creek and Little Mission Creek at the tip of the hook of Hood Canal. Today’s Belfair State Park was covered by glacial ice during the last ice age. The finger-like waterways of South Puget Sound were excavated by highly pressurized meltwater streams that developed as the ice began to melt.

Bridgeport State Park provides recreational opportunities on the shore of the Columbia River reservoir created by the hydroelectric dam named for Nez Perce Chief Joseph. The park is located in a part of the Colville Indian Reservation (where Chief Joseph lived in exile after his defeat by the US Army in the 1877 Nez Perce War) that was removed from Indigenous trust ownership by a Presidential Proclamation and transferred to non-Indigenous homesteaders in the 1920s.

Curlew Lake State Park is perched in a high valley in northeastern Washington that owes its landform features to Ice Age glaciers. The lake, six miles long, half a mile wide, and reaching a depth of 130 feet, is centered in the valley of Curlew Creek. The creek drains to the Kettle River, which wanders back and forth across the US/Canada border to its confluence with the Columbia River near Kettle Falls.