History of Laws

It might be surprising that the designation, operation and management of Mount Rainier Naitonal Park is governed by laws, some of which in turn define the National Park Service policies, rules and regulations used in the actual work by the NPS in the administration, management and operation by the staff.

Mount Rainier was first designating as a Forest Reserve in 1897 and then officially designated as National Park in 1899, and over the years since various laws were passed governing a variety of measures associated with the NP. You can get the complete text of the 1899 law designating Mount Rainier National Park here, along with a listing and links to the full text of all the applicable past and current laws since here.

As can be seen in the list, there's a lot to cover with the NP, from the mundane operation and maintanence to the expansion of the boundary. I present it so people can see the work it takes to create and keep a Natonal Park of this size and beauty. On top of that add all the work by the various special interest groups expressing their issues with the many issues that happen either by nature, eg. November 2006 floods, or people, eg. guns in NP's, and you can see it gets complex.

In addition I will be adding Web pages, hopefully soon, about the predecessor to the NP, the Mount Rainier Forest Reserve, which for most of the area around the NP became the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, with smaller areas for other national forest and wilderness areas, and about the effort to establish the NP from 1893, when the first bill was introduced to 1899 and the law designating it.

In the meantime, I hope you find this informative.