For the original inhabitants of the Olympic Peninsula, the highest peaks of the mountains were the only refuges during the Great Floods at the beginning of time.
 For the Elwha Klallam people, that peak was Mount Carrie; for the Skokomish, it was a peak west of Mount Ellinor.
 The Thunderbird figure of the Hoh tribe lived on Mount Olympus, in a den under Blue Glacier.
 People in the Skokomish, Quinault, and Elwha watersheds regularly traveled into the high country to hunt elk, gather huckleberries and beargrass, and perform spirit quests.
 Trails across the mountains allowed members of the various tribes to visit and trade with each other.
 The cross-Olympic expeditions of the 1890s found tree blazes that they took to mark Indian trails.

Archeological evidence shows that the Olympic Mountains were inhabited by Paleolithic hunters after the retreat of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet.
Stone tools in the Deer Park area date to 7600 years ago, prior to the volcanic eruption of Mount Mazama.
 Similar tools have been found near Lake Cushman and throughout the Olympic subalpine meadows and ridges, as well as in coastal areas.
 In addition, a fragment of a woven basket found in the Olympic subalpine of Obstruction Point was radiocarbon dated to nearly 3000 years ago.

The mountains were originally called "Sun-a-do" by the Duwamish Indians, while the first European to see them, the Spanish navigator Juan Pérez, named Mount Olympus "Santa Rosalia", in 1774.
 But the English captain John Meares, seeing them in 1788, thought he would honor the Greek explorer Juan de Fuca who claimed to have found the fabled Northwest passage nearby by naming the mountain after the mythical home of Greek Gods which is "Mount Olympus" in Greece.
Various names for the mountains were used based on the name Mount Olympus, including the Olympic Range, the Olympian Mountains, and the Olympus Range.
 Alternate proposals never caught on, and in 1864 the Seattle Weekly Gazette persuaded the government to make the present-day name official, although other names continued to be used.
For the original inhabitants of the Olympic Peninsula, the highest peaks of the mountains were the only refuges during the Great Floods at the beginning of time.  For the Elwha Klallam people, that peak was Mount Carrie; for the Skokomish, it was a peak west of Mount Ellinor.  The Thunderbird figure of the Hoh tribe lived on Mount Olympus, in a den under Blue Glacier.  People in the Skokomish, Quinault, and Elwha watersheds regularly traveled into the high country to hunt elk, gather huckleberries and beargrass, and perform spirit quests.  Trails across the mountains allowed members of the various tribes to visit and trade with each other.  The cross-Olympic expeditions of the 1890s found tree blazes that they took to mark Indian trails.
Archeological evidence shows that the Olympic Mountains were inhabited by Paleolithic hunters after the retreat of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. Stone tools in the Deer Park area date to 7600 years ago, prior to the volcanic eruption of Mount Mazama.  Similar tools have been found near Lake Cushman and throughout the Olympic subalpine meadows and ridges, as well as in coastal areas.  In addition, a fragment of a woven basket found in the Olympic subalpine of Obstruction Point was radiocarbon dated to nearly 3000 years ago.
The mountains were originally called "Sun-a-do" by the Duwamish Indians, while the first European to see them, the Spanish navigator Juan Pérez, named Mount Olympus "Santa Rosalia", in 1774.  But the English captain John Meares, seeing them in 1788, thought he would honor the Greek explorer Juan de Fuca who claimed to have found the fabled Northwest passage nearby by naming the mountain after the mythical home of Greek Gods which is "Mount Olympus" in Greece. Various names for the mountains were used based on the name Mount Olympus, including the Olympic Range, the Olympian Mountains, and the Olympus Range.  Alternate proposals never caught on, and in 1864 the Seattle Weekly Gazette persuaded the government to make the present-day name official, although other names continued to be used.
Olympic Mountains