Hurricane Ridge Day Lodge rebuild is at an impasse 2 years after fire

On May 7, 2023, the webcams went dark at Hurricane Ridge. Two National Park Service rangers drove up the switchbacks that lead to the highest road-accessible point in Olympic National Park and found a shocking scene: The Hurricane Ridge Day Lodge had been gutted by fire. The building was declared a total loss. An investigation report later found no definite cause for the fire.

Despite a congressional allocation of billions of dollars to the Park Service to rebuild from disasters, the agency has made no progress replacing the 73-year-old visitor center. At the same time, current and former NPS officials have also questioned or cast doubt on the alleged $80 million price tag to rebuild the facility, which Sen. Patty Murray claimed to have earmarked less than six months after flames consumed the lodge.

Two years later at Hurricane Ridge, there are only charred remains. The restrooms and ranger station are made up of portable trailers; sandwich boards with thumbtacked maps and pamphlets substitute for museum-quality exhibitions now in ashes.

The impasse over Hurricane Ridge may be indicative of both Washington state’s changing fortunes under President Donald Trump’s administration and the executive branch’s broader effort not to spend money provided by Congress.

“As Trump and Elon [Musk] openly defy our spending laws, illegally freeze funding that is owed to our communities, and rip up contracts in an unprecedented and unlawful effort to break government and enrich themselves, I will do everything I can [to] make sure the funding I fought hard to secure for Hurricane Ridge is spent as intended to rebuild this important site,” Murray said in a statement to The Seattle Times.

Funding secured?

Originally built as a ski lodge in 1952, the Hurricane Ridge visitor center is perched at 5,242 feet above sea level and offers commanding views of the Olympic Mountains on clear days. The panoramic point attracts roughly 300,000 visitors annually.

“The day lodge was the crown jewel visitor center of Olympic National Park,” said Tommy Farris, owner and founder of Olympic Hiking Company, which provides guided tours in the park. “It made Hurricane Ridge a more welcoming and accessible place.”

Remodeled in 1983 and again in 2000, the lodge was closed to the public in May 2023 for HVAC repairs and upgrades, concrete resurfacing and rebuilding an access ramp and stairs. The fire threw a wrench in that project, turning a planned $11 million rehabilitation into a much larger endeavor.

By October 2023, Murray claimed to have a solution, telling The Seattle Times that she had inserted a line item in the White House’s emergency disaster relief request to allocate $80 million to rebuild the lodge and construct a temporary visitor facility in the interim. It took until the waning days of the Biden administration for Congress to pass a $100 billion spending package to provide relief from Hurricanes Helene and Milton and cover costs to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.

Also tucked into that bill: $2.2 billion for National Park Service construction, funding which, according to a document issued by the Office of Management and Budget, “would be used to repair and rebuild Federal facilities, roads, and other assets damaged as a result of” a litany of disasters, including “fires in Washington state.”

Since the bill’s passage in December, Murray’s office has insisted that this line is a reference to the Hurricane Ridge Day Lodge as the most prominent fire-related disaster requiring the use of construction funds in a Washington national park. Former NPS Director Chuck Sams, who left office in January, concurred via text message in April: “That is fair to say.”

The National Park Service has been equivocal, declining to comment on multiple inquiries for nearly five months on whether funding to rebuild the Day Lodge has been secured. On April 29, Olympic National Park spokesperson Molly Pittman wrote via email, “The project is currently under review and, if approved, it would be eligible for disaster supplemental funding.”

Earmarks and price tag

At issue are two matters: How much sway does Murray have over how individual agencies spend money allocated by Congress, and how much will rebuilding the lodge cost?

The first question hinges on the practice of earmarking, whereby members of Congress direct funding to a specific project. In her previous role as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Murray doled out earmarks to Washington state totaling some $250 million as of March 2024, as tallied by Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat.

But not all earmarks for Park Service projects are created equal, explained Jonathan Jarvis, who served as National Park Service director from 2009 to 2017. “There can be an informal way and a formal way,” he said via phone.

A formal earmark involves the NPS priority list of line-item construction needs, which the agency submits to Congress. Members of Congress can then move items up the priority list to ensure they are completed faster. An informal earmark, said Jarvis, is when a senator on the Appropriations Committee tells the National Park Service director or secretary of the interior how they would like money to be spent. In Jarvis’ estimation, the Hurricane Ridge Day Lodge was an informal earmark — one that is now subject to the political whims of a secretary of the interior serving a Republican president who has been hostile to his Democratic opposition.

Then there’s the $80 million price tag. Murray’s office said the figure came from the National Park Service. It includes the full rebuild of the day lodge; replacement of furniture, fixtures and exhibition materials that were all lost in the fire; interim visitor facilities; and partial rehabilitation of water, sewer, electrical and communication systems. Given the remote, high-elevation location buffeted by heavy winter snow, the construction season is also short.

Sams wrote via text message, “I don’t recall specifically, though that number sounds right to me.”

The new Park Service leadership does not endorse that figure, however. “Estimating the total cost of this long-term construction project is complex,” Pittman wrote via email. “To ensure potential contractors produce competitive and cost-effective bids, federal project budgets are not published before contracts are awarded.”

Jarvis questioned the cost as potentially excessive. “It just seems like a really big number to me,” he said, noting that the current Henry M. Jackson Visitor Center at Mount Rainier National Park, which opened in 2008, cost $44.56 million (adjusted for inflation). Between the Park Service’s nearly $30 billion deferred maintenance backlog and the ongoing plethora of recent disasters — since the disaster funding was passed in December, for example, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area suffered devastating wildfires — Jarvis suggested a mantra he employed during his tenure.

“Follow the Mick Jagger approach to things: Sometimes you don’t get what you want, but you can get what you need,” he said. “Figure out what Hurricane Ridge needs, not necessarily what they want.”