Hurricane Ridge lodged
The impact of not investing in our national park
A year and a half after the smoke ceased rising from the rubble of Hurricane Ridge Lodge, the path to rebuilding the iconic chalet that welcomed visitors to the heart of Olympic National Park for over 70 years remains uncertain. Complicating matters, the National Park Service’s (NPS) efforts to rehabilitate the water system there “may have an adverse effect on archaeological sites” that have cultural significance for the Port Gamble S’Klallam, Jamestown S’Klallam, and Lower Elwha Klallam Tribes.
According to KONP Radio, “The park has consulted with the Tribes and the Washington State Historic Preservation Officer to identify mitigations for those impacts, and the Tribes have been invited to sign the Memorandum of Agreement to agree to the proposals.”
The park has also invited the public to comment. However, it has not provided details on what to comment on. The archeological sites are listed as “45CA302 and 45CA487,” with no details given. The park's “Planning, Environment & Public Comment” (PEPC) notice doesn’t explain how the three coastal tribes came to have archeological sites a mile high and 18 miles south of Port Angeles. This lack of detail makes composing public comments difficult (public comment closes November 30th.)
Recent infrastructure collaborations with area tribes have led to project delays and increased costs. The County’s collaboration with the Jamestown Tribe on Towne Road led to millions in cost overruns after the Tribe deliberately breached a dike that held back the Dungeness River (the original estimate for repair was over $10 million, a cost absorbed by taxpayers).
Consequently, Towne Road’s completion was delayed for years. The Tribe demanded at least five costly revisions to the stormwater mitigation plan, which made a 0.6-mile section of Towne Road the most environmentally friendly county road in all of Washington State (at tremendous cost to taxpayers). The Tribe’s environmental crusade seemingly conflicted with its grading and filling in wetlands to expand its golf course. At the same time, despite environmental concerns, the Tribe signed a contract for its 50-acre commercial oyster harvesting venture within a National Wildlife Refuge.
Fewer visitors visiting
With legacy industries like logging and fishing facing challenges, our area has turned to tourism. This makes sense; out of 63 national parks, Olympic National Park is the tenth most visited in the Country (the most visited in Washington State), and it’s in our own backyard. Eighteen months after losing a key attraction like Hurricane Ridge Lodge, the impact on visitors and the tourism industry can begin to be measured.
In 2023, 2.95 million recreational visitors visited the Olympic National Park, up 21% from 2022. It looks like 2024 will continue that trend of visitor growth. While 2023 parkwide visitor statistics look good, it was 9.2% below the pre-pandemic level of 3.25 million in 2019.
However, the impact on Port Angeles, the gateway to Hurricane Ridge, tells a different story. "Visitors at Entrance" to the Hurricane District were down -34% last year. This is also -49.9% lower than the pre-pandemic levels of 2019.
Another telling statistic for traffic passing through Port Angeles is that the "Traffic Count at Fee Collection Station (Hurricane)" declined -36% in 2023 compared to 2022. Traffic counts are down -52% from the pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
The traffic downturn from 2022 to 2023 seems specific to Hurricane Ridge. During the same period, Sol Duc Road increased by 23%, the Ozette Ranger Station increased by 37%, and East Beach Road increased by 56%, all while Hurricane Ridge plummeted by -36%.
Lodge limbo logic
“Hurricane Ridge is in a very, very tentative state,” explained the park’s superintendent, Sula Jacobs, to the County Commissioners during a May work session. Amenities the lodge once provided, like restrooms, have been replaced by a series of trailers. “We still do not have funding to build a permanent facility,” said Jacobs six months ago, a barrier that remains true today.
The National Park self-insures its structures, so there will be no payout from an insurance company. According to Jacobs, ONP is waiting for appropriations from the federal government to begin the rebuilding process. Architects cannot draft plans without earmarked dollars, and contractors cannot be hired.
“It’s so hard; it’s in such a bad spot, with such a small construction window,” Jacobs said of the challenges faced when building a new structure at 5,242 feet. For a nation that can build structures in the Rocky Mountains and the Alaskan Interior, it seems a lodge could be built during the temperate northwest’s construction window.
Construction isn’t the problem.
Show me the money
“We’re talking about clearly north of $50 million for this kind of size of structure, so this is clearly not insignificant,” Jacobs told the Peninsula Daily News in August of last year. The article covered a visit from Senator Patty Murray, who surveyed the ruins where the lodge had been three months prior.
“I know how much the Hurricane Ridge Lodge means to Washington state families, visitors, and every community around Olympic National Park,” said Murray in a different Peninsula Daily News article. “I’m already in touch with federal agencies and will do everything in my power to ensure that the National Park Service has the funding they need to rebuild this important site.”
This seemed promising since Senator Patty Murray chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, which decides how to fund federal programs.
Since the lodge burned, Senator Murray has secured $4.9 million to relocate a Health Center for the Makah Tribe and $35 million for the North Olympic Peninsula Recompete Coalition grant to reinvigorate the local economy. Nearly a quarter of that money is already earmarked for area Tribes. Commissioner Mike French suggested that the tribes could use the grant money to hire and train grant writers.
Senator Murray has requested $80 million to rebuild the lodge, but Congress still needs to approve the funding. The “Budget Justifications” document published by the Department of the Interior for the National Park Service’s fiscal year 2025 shows no funds appropriated for the lodge’s construction.
Then there’s the Elwha…
A year after removing the Glines Canyon Dam in 2014, the river washed out a portion of Olympic Hot Springs Road, cutting off access to the NPS Elwha Ranger Station. Less than four miles south of Highway 101, the station and visitor center were jumping-off points for several popular hikes into the park’s interior. Crews had just spent months updating the building to make it ADA-accessible — wheelchair ramps, a new roof, and a fresh coat of paint had been added.
After the initial flooding and erosion, a temporary bridge was installed. However, in 2017, another round of high-water events permanently closed the road when the Elwha Campground was flooded and buried in silt.
Initially, the NPS seemed to be in favor of repairing the road. A notice for a public meeting in 2020 explained,
“Olympic National Park, along with the Federal Highway Administration as a cooperating agency, is seeking public review for the Olympic Hot Springs Road (OHSR) Long-term Access Environmental Assessment (EA). The road has experienced multiple washouts since the completion of the dam removal project in 2014. The Elwha Valley is one of the most visited areas within Olympic National Park and the OHSR provides the only vehicular access into the Elwha Valley.”
The notice clearly stated the Park’s intent to reopen the road:
”The purpose of the project is to rehabilitate the 8.2 mile Olympic Hot Springs (Elwha Valley) Road within Olympic National Park and to restore public and administrative road access to visitor and administrative use areas that are currently inaccessible due to washouts on the road.”
Even though the road provided emergency and wildfire-fighting access, one group didn’t want the road to reopen into America’s 10th most popular national park. The dissent came from a sovereign nation.
“The park was working towards an Environmental Assessment for rebuilding the road,” wrote the Park’s Acting Public Information Officer, Amon Almy, to local resident Daniel Sallee, who had requested a status update on the road. “However, one of our tribal partners, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, expressed concerns about rebuilding a road. Since then the project has been on hold as we wait for further direction from the NPS Regional Office and the National Office.”
KONP Radio reported on the Lower Elwha Tribe’s concerns, too:
“We have learned the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe objected to that plan in December of 2020. In two letters written to then Park Superintendent Sarah Creachbaum and obtained by KONP from the Tribe, Chairwoman Frances Charles says that while the Tribe supports reopening access to the park, they don’t support the preferred solution because of various environmental impacts it would have. Charles says other options were considered by National Park officials but were ultimately abandoned. The design the Tribe likes is to rebuild the road in the same basic location it’s in now, but to do it as an elevated causeway above the flood plain that would let the river flow, and allow salmon to swim, beneath it.
Could the Tribe’s opinion have something to do with why there has been no action thus far? We don’t know. Olympic National Park and National Park Service officials have so far refused to respond to our numerous requests for information on why the process appears stymied.”
Today, the Road to the Elwha Ranger Station remains closed. Those who hike around the washout can walk miles down a two-lane, paved road that hasn’t seen a car in seven years. Upon arriving at the Ranger Station, the wheelchair ramps are ready to make the visitor center accessible to everyone. Surprisingly, the grass hasn’t overtaken the gravel parking areas. In a dystopian scene from an abandoned amusement park, a solar-powered kiosk still talks to visitors about the history of removing the Glines Canyon Dam.
Reopening the road could benefit the Lower Elwha Tribe’s many enterprises. Visitors who want to witness a river flowing freely after the largest dam removal project in the Country’s history could visit the Tribe’s nearby casino, refuel at the nearest gas station (Lower Elwha Food & Fuel), and stay in the downtown hotel the Tribe plans on constructing.
For the generations of people who enjoyed hiking to Humes Ranch and driving to the Olympic Hot Springs trailhead, the words that come to mind are tradition, nostalgia, and longing.
A different word comes to mind for those who realize this has been inaccessible for seven years because a small stretch of washed-out road isn’t being repaired.
Waste.
Mixed messaging
The National Park System Advisory Board advises the federal government on National Parks. Its 15 members include college professors, heads of environmental special interest groups, and tribal leaders. Geographically, the closest member to Olympic National Park appears to be the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission's Executive Director, a Yakama Nation member.
The board members are appointed, not elected, but they represent your interests in the parks you fund. The Board meets next month, but its page does not list contact information, and meetings are not open to the public.
The National Park Service’s mission is to “preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.” Lately, however, it seems park leaders don’t actually want people in the parks to enjoy them. Our roads, lodges, and infrastructure are crumbling, burning, and being washed away faster than the NPS can replace them.
Even more frustrating is that this public entity appears to have no accountability to taxpayers or the park's users. Olympic National Park is more apt to be influenced by sovereign nations than the residents who fund it.
When will people realize that we can not shrink our way to prosperity. The natural resources of our area must be leveraged for our economic future. I am all for reasonable regulations, but it seems like we keeping hurting ourselves. Timber, fishing, and now tourism are under attack. And the tribes need to help, not hinder. Our largest employers are already tax funded (OMC, city, county, schools, NPS, CG) and they are struggling with budgets, crumbling infrastructure, and limited additional help from the State or Federal governments. We keep taxing more those that remain here, but I am skeptical this can continue. I am not a political person, but being progressive used to about making “progress”. Our community seems to be stuck in a nostalgia loop with few people looking forward. We need real leadership that is transparent, sets future goals, and holds itself accountable. It shocks me that PA’s drafting of an updated Comprehensive Plan seems to prioritize affordable housing, while economic growth is a an afterthought. The majority of PA households exist at or below 80% of AMI. We desperately need private industry to create real jobs. I was recently surprised by the presentation on Coffee with Colleen from Sequim’s City Manager, and Community and Economic Development and Public Utility staff. It was professional, forward looking, optimistic, and quantified real changes underway. I have not seen anything similar to this from Port Angeles.
They sit at our tables in public hearings and policy planning on a trail committee..
We need to be able to sit in the federal and NGO level table too.
The pictures on Elwha shows exactly what the Dungeness would look like if the NODC cabal has its way. They needed to eliminate the ditch capacity and now they want to supplement the rain shadow to create that kind of event. Reckless meandering they dont want on their lands. The Elwha is missing the entire right side of its estuary where the reservations buildings are. Funny how their estuary restoration grants got spent on climate migrants and property buy outs. instead..The flooding upstream past the old Altaire was planned. That's a planned meandering zone. Now they are coming right down the middle of the Dungeness and have that area planned for flooding. FEMA even chipped in grant money to help create a community flood plan....right in your own community.