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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.

Rasar State Park lies midway along the Skagit River’s winding path between the rugged North Cascade Mountains and the Salish Sea. The Skagit River, part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, is the second largest river on the west coast of the contiguous United States, after the Columbia. Like much of the Skagit River Valley, the park land is naturally terraced as the river has cut into glacial deposits from the ice age.

Fields Spring State Park has long been a summer oasis of wildflower-filled forest and a winter paradise for snowshoers and skiers. The park occupies a corner of the Blue Mountains, rising high above the arid landscape of the Columbia Plateau below.

Joemma Beach State Park provides access to the shores of southern Puget Sound. The sinuous saltwater passageways of the South Sound, including Case Inlet in front of the park, were molded and scoured by glacial meltwaters at the close of the Pleistocene ice age.

Between the Mountains and the Sea

Dosewallips State Park features extensive tidelands at the mouth of the Dosewallips River on Hood Canal. Erosion of the Olympic Mountains to the west combined with the steep gradient of the river carries a large quantity of sediment downriver. Silt, sand and gravel are deposited by the river when it reaches the flatter terrain in the park, naturally braiding its riverbed with many channels as it flows towards Hood Canal. The large fan of sediment and mud at the river’s mouth has long been a rich estuary.

A Mountain on an Island

The pinnacle of Moran State Park, Mount Constitution, rises 2,407 feet directly from sea level to the second highest point on an oceanic island in the contiguous 48 US states. The rocks that make up the heights of Mount Constitution began as lava erupting on the ocean floor or slowly accumulating sediments formed by skeletons of marine microorganisms, windblown dust and volcanic ash settling to the ocean floor. The pillow basalts, chert and shale seen at rocky exposures in the park are evidence of these events.