Mount Rainier National Park

Mount Rainier National Park, established in 1899 as the fifth national park in the country, protects the towering, glacier-clad volcano of the same name in west-central Washington. At 14,411 feet, Mount Rainier dominates the park and the whole Puget Sound skyline, its ice-covered cone rising far above the surrounding Cascade ridges. The park preserves the volcano along with old-growth forest, waterfalls, and the famous subalpine wildflower meadows that ring the peak.

Those meadows, in places like Paradise and Sunrise, explode with color each summer below the glaciers, drawing most of the park's visitors. Rainier carries the largest single-peak glacier system in the contiguous United States, and as an active volcano it is closely watched. The mountain wrings heavy snowfall from Pacific storms — Paradise once recorded one of the highest seasonal snowfalls ever measured.

• Washington
  The Evergreen State, the wet and dry sides of the Cascades located in
• Mount Rainier
  A glacier-clad volcano looming over Seattle protects