US-101: The Olympic Peninsula Loop

The Route at a Glance

US-101 leaves Olympia north along the west shore of Hood Canal, a fjord the glaciers cut, past the Skokomish reservation at the canal's southern bend and the oyster beds of Quilcene. Beyond Discovery Bay it turns west into the rain shadow of the Olympics to Sequim and Port Angeles, where the road to Hurricane Ridge climbs into the park and the ferry leaves for Victoria.

On September 30, 1937, Franklin Roosevelt drove this road to look at the park Congress was arguing over. In Port Angeles a sign held up by schoolchildren asked him for it. He spent the night in a cottage at the Lake Crescent Tavern, now Lake Crescent Lodge, on the long glacial lake west of town, and told the officials gathered there that the park they were proposing was not large enough. He signed the bill creating Olympic National Park on June 29, 1938. The highway still follows his route, along the south shore of Lake Crescent and down to Forks.

Forks is a logging town that found a second life in the 2000s as the setting of the Twilight novels. Fourteen miles west, at La Push, the Quileute lived on a reservation of less than a square mile at the river mouth, much of it within reach of a Cascadia tsunami; in 2012 Congress returned 785 acres of park land to them, and the tribal school moved up the hill in 2022. South of Forks the highway reaches the open coast at Ruby Beach and Kalaloch and runs above the surf for a stretch before turning inland to Lake Quinault, where Roosevelt stopped for a salmon lunch at the lodge on his second day, then down through cutover timberland to Aberdeen on Grays Harbor.

The Drive, Stop by Stop

3 stops along the route, in driving order from Olympia, Washington to Aberdeen, Washington. 2 of them sit off the road itself — the distance is noted on each.

1. 1

   Glines Canyon Spillway Overlook

   Port Angeles

   4.3 miles off the route

   West of Port Angeles, south on Olympic Hot Springs Road to the Madison Falls trailhead, then on foot or by bike.

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2. 2

   Hoh Rain Forest

   Forks

   13 miles off the route

   South of Forks, eighteen miles east on the Upper Hoh Road.

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3. 3

   Ruby Beach

   Forks

   On the highway where it first reaches the open coast.

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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let US-101: The Olympic Peninsula Loop do what it does best.