If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 213

Camp of the Clouds, ca 1911-1915

We have taken several beautiful hikes in the Mount Rainier National Park so when I found this vintage postcard with a photograph by Lloyd Garrison or L.G. Linkletter showing the “Camp of the Clouds” at Rainier it seemed natural to include it here.  Linklettter was a well known local photographer, born in 1879 in Michigan and died 7 September 1937 in Seattle, Washington, who took his photos between 1907 and 1935.  This particular postcard was found among others dating from the 1920s and 1930s; however, tent camps like the one shown were not in use much beyond 1915 when automobiles could drive all the way up to Paradise and better facilities were being added to the park. 

In the late 1800s and early 1900s there were several camps like this one in the Paradise area.  Before the permanent National Park Service presence established in 1911, tent camping was the only overnight accommodation available to the growing number of tourists during of that era.  Mule or horse pack trains provided transportation from Longmire Springs to Paradise until around 1910.  A government road to Paradise was surveyed in 1903 and built between 1904 and 1910 with some improvements added during the years following until 1915.  By 1910 the Government Road went up as far as Narada Falls with the rest of the way to the Camp of the Clouds via horse.
 

Narada Falls, June 2015, approximately 3 miles below Paradise*

 

United States President Howard W. Taft made the first car trip to Paradise Valley in 1911 although mules had to be used to assist his car above Narada Falls.  After 1915 when the road and automobiles were sufficiently improved, day use of Paradise was possible. The new road also allowed for expanded commercial construction and facilities that still exist today.

For more information, see:
http://www.nps.gov/mora/learn/historyculture/upload/Paradise%20Camp%20Report%20for%20Adobe%20Reader.pdf

*  See also the Thursday postcard, #52 from 16 August 2012 and Summer hiking highlighs -- Mt. Rainier, 1 August 2015.