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From the Nisqually Entrance Gate to Paradise, you’ll travel nineteen miles, and from 2,000 feet in elevation to over a mile high, at 5,400 feet. It is said that when James Longmire’s daughter-in-law Martha first saw the meadows, she exclaimed, “Oh, what a paradise!” For centuries people have visited this place. Long before white settlers arrived, Native peoples, including the Nisqually, Yakama, Puyallup, Muckleshoot, and Upper Cowlitz, stayed in the meadowlands that surround Paradise in late summer for berry picking and hunting. In late August and early September, the huckleberries and blueberries were lush and ripe: animals sought out the ripening fruit too, many of them in their finest fur, after feeding plentifully in summer.
South of Paradise were heavily forested areas that burned in a fire in 1885. The limbs of the burnt Alaska cedars fell off, and then the bark, so that gradually all that remained were silvery trunks, and afterward the area was called the Silver Forest. Climbers and campers spread tents all over the meadows, and cottages sprang up, too, all without any cohesive plan. There was a demand for overnight accommodations and the tents and cottages were not sufficient.
When Stephen Mather asked for a hotel to be built at Paradise, the architect decided to use local materials in the design and harvested timber from the Silver Forest. Alaska cedar also was used to build the interior furniture, including massive tables and chairs. Hans Fraehnke, a German woodcrafter, made the piano case as well as the grandfather clock.
On a day I visited in mid-June, there were still many feet of snow at the Paradise parking lot. Skiers and sledders crowded the slopes. I walked toward the Paradise Inn, still locked up and in its winter sleep.
Left: Fairfax Bridge, Carbon River, Right: Tolmie Creek
