Archives West Finding Aid

The banks of the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula were home to Klallam Indians for thousands of years before Euroamerican settlement. The first permanent white residents on the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula staked homestead claims in the early 1850s when the Washington Territory was created. By the 1880s, many homestead claims were filed, all the way into the upper Elwha Valley.

Many homesteaders did not stay long, and the homesteading population of the Elwha valley peaked in the 1890s. Those that did remain into the 1900s not only farmed but took on multiple occupations in order to survive, including fishing, hunting, guiding, packing, and other ventures. Settler Warriner Smith operated a sawmill on his homestead. William MacDonald became Elwha Valley’s first postmaster. H.B. Herrick operated a grocery business, hotel, and managed the Elwha post office. Doc Ludden settled along the Elwha in 1906, a later arrival to the area. He established an orchard, apiary, and store where he sold his products, as well as ran a hostel for travelers.

Transportation was difficult in the Olympic Peninsula in the early 1900s due to a lack of roads. Brothers Grant and William Humes operated a packing and guiding business for mountaineers and hunters. In 1910, the Herrick store was built at the western terminus of the Olympic Highway and became the headquarters for pack trains entering the Olympic interior.

In the early 1900s several resorts were established in the area, within the current Olympic National Park boundaries. One of the earliest resorts was the Log Cabin Hotel or Piedmont Hotel on the north shore of Lake Crescent, which was built in 1895 and burned down in 1932. Other resorts took advantage of the natural hot springs in the area. The Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort opened in 1912, on the banks of the Sol Duc River. It burned down in 1916, but was rebuilt in the 1930s.

The longest running of the resorts in the Elwha Valley was the Olympic Hot Springs Resort opened in 1909 by William “Billy” Everett and his wife, Margaret Schoeffel, along with her brother, Karl Schoeffel. When the resort was opened it was fairly primitive, with a natural pool lined with wood and tents for visitors to sleep in. Over the years, the Everett family built up the resort, adding cabins for guests and a large concrete pool. Travel to and from the resort was difficult as there were no established roads to the resort until the extension to the Olympic Highway was completed in 1931. Before that time, there was an 11-mile trail used to bring in supplies as well as visitors to the resort. The Humes brothers operated a pack train to and from the resort until 1912, when H.B. Herrick took over the operation. The Olympic Hot Springs resort was run by the Everett and Schoeffel families until it closed in 1966.

Source: Historic Resource Study of Olympic National Park https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/olym/hrs/chap2.htm

Source: An Interpretive History of the Elwha River Valley and the Legacy of Hydropower on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula https://www.nps.gov/olym/learn/nature/upload/Final-Draft_20110118.pdf