Spanish Explorers

The board is wrong by a decade. Juan Pérez sighted the peak from the Santiago on August 11, 1774, sailing south from Haida Gwaii with a mostly Mexican crew, and named it Cerro Nevado de Santa Rosalía, the snowy peak of Saint Rosalia, not the board's Sierra Nevada. John Meares saw it not four years later but fourteen, on July 4, 1788, and renamed it Mount Olympus, a mountain fit for the gods. Pérez's name is often called the first a European gave to any feature in what is now Washington. It did not last.

What the plaque says

Spanish Explorers The Spanish Captain Juan Perez sailed north from San Blas in 1774, with orders from Spain to claim the Coast, against the Russians. Perez discovered Nootka Sound on the West shore of Vancouver Island and traded with the natives of the Queen Charlottes. He sighted a snow peak, towering high and afar from a rock-bound coast, on August 11, 1774. He named it Sierra Nevada de Santa Rosalia. Four years later British Captain John Meares was the second explorer to observe the mighty peak. He named it Mt. Olympus . . . . and put it on the map forever. Erected by the Washington State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Glines Canyon Spillway Overlook — 14 mi
  A viewpoint built on the spillway of a 210-foot dam that is no longer there, above a valley that was a reservoir for most of a century.

More markers nearby

• Juan de Fuca — 8.6 mi
• Discovery Bay — 21 mi