In 1788, a British mariner looked at a peak on the far edge of the known world and named it after the home of the gods. Captain John Meares had never set foot on Mount Olympus — and for another century, neither had anyone else. The interior of the Olympic Peninsula was among the last unmapped places in the contiguous United States; O'Neil's 1885 reconnaissance was cut short by orders, and the Seattle Press Expedition spent six months crossing the mountains in 1889–90 through terrain with no roads. When Theodore Roosevelt set aside the national monument in 1909, he named the elk as a reason — a species already disappearing. When Franklin Roosevelt stood at Lake Crescent Lodge in 1937 and told assembled officials *I am thinking 50 years ahead*, Congress moved. Nine months later, the park was law, drawn large enough to take in the old-growth rainforest the monument had left out.
