Mount Rainier National Park’s best-kept secret is right in front of your eyes

Not far inside the Nisqually entrance to Mount Rainier National Park is the Longmire Historic District, which once housed the park headquarters. Nestled inside Longmire is a mountain lodge called the National Park Inn, Mount Rainier’s only year-round lodging option.

Somehow, even though its obvious and chalet-like curb appeal is absolutely impossible to miss while driving Paradise Valley Road up through the park, actually visiting, and perhaps, spending the night at the National Park Inn during the winter and spring seasons seems to be one of Mount Rainier National Park’s best-kept secrets.

Longmire Springs and the National Park Inn

In 1883, explorer and pioneer James Longmire was on his way back from a successful summit of Mount Rainier, when he happened upon geothermal hot springs in a meadow while chasing after his horse. Within the year, he’d filed a claim and built cabins.

In 1890, the Longmire Springs Hotel opened its doors, boasting five guest rooms, a lobby and several bathhouses, promising iron and sodium-bicarbonate-rich hot spring healing. At its peak, the hotel had 12 guest rooms and a separate, two-story annex.

In 1897, Longmire died, and two years later, Mount Rainier became our nation’s fifth national park.

The National Park Inn, owned and operated by Tacoma Eastern Railroad Company, officially opened nearby under lease from the new Mount Rainier National Park in 1906. It had 60 guest rooms.

The park’s first concessionaire (an outside management company that helps run and facilitate NPS businesses within park boundaries), Rainier National Park Company, arrived in 1916 and purchased the Longmire Springs Hotel, as well as the National Park Inn from the railroad company.

After determining Longmire Meadow’s geothermal springs did not, in fact, hold any medicinal value, the concessionaire burned Longmire Springs Hotel to the ground and relocated its two-story annex across the street next to the National Park Inn.

In 1926, the National Park Inn burned as well, leaving only the newly relocated two-story annex in its place, which now acts as the National Park Inn.

The National Park Inn now offers 25 guest rooms, a restaurant, a gift shop, a lounge and a giant front porch for guests to lounge and stare across the street at the location of James Longmire’s original vision.

A common coincidence

Those who work in National Parks are often referred to as “parks people.” I know this because I was once one myself. There are many jobs within the National Park Service, from park rangers and biologists, to administrators, volunteers, and custodial and construction workers, to just name a few.

If you love the outdoors and have aged out of camp counseling, working for the park service is a great way to go. Another avenue into working in a national park is to go work for the concessionaire. Concessionaires manage guest facilities like lodging, dining, recreation, and, sometimes, visitor services.

There are 63 national parks in the United States, and somehow, once you’ve worked in one, you know just about everyone who’s ever had the same experience.

Take me, for example. An outdoors reporter for the Tacoma News Tribune, but once an employee of the National Park Service and the park concessionaire in Yosemite (who, at the time, was called DNC).

I recently visited the National Park Inn and decided I wanted to write a story about it, but I was having trouble getting through to the concessionaire (Rainier Guest Services).

Finally, I simply rang the front desk. A concessionaire employee picked up the phone, and in a lively voice – concessionaire employees can be anything from college students looking for a summer job to official “parks people” who have been picking up front desk phones for 50-plus years – informed me that I would need to speak with the general manager of Rainier Guest Services.

“Great, would you mind connecting me to them and telling me their name?” I responded.

“His name is Jay Vincent,” she said.

I thanked her and did not ask to be transferred to his office. I picked up my phone and texted him instead. He hired me for my first job in Yosemite, 17 years ago.

Park life

When I met Jay Vincent, he was head of Yosemite’s High Sierra Camps – backcountry tent cabins placed throughout the High Sierras where hikers could receive a bed with a mattress and a hot meal.

Jay hired me to manage one of the High Sierra Camps called Sunrise Meadows. At the time, there were five.

Jay was instrumental in keeping Yosemite’s High Sierra Camps functioning. He was the perfect mix of button-up shirt in the office, and beard, boots and Carhartt in the backcountry. Not everyone wants to live and work multiple miles off pavement in the backcountry, but those who do are a special group.

They’re not exactly the type that loves to be managed, but Jay and I managed. I hadn’t spoken to him in years.

When I left Yosemite in 2013, Jay was still working there. Since then, he’d had stints in Badlands and Olympic National Parks before settling in at Rainier.

“I’ve bounced around a bit, but I’m the park general manager here, so I oversee all the concessions at Rainier National Park,” Jay told me over the phone. Concessions at Mount Rainier include the Paradise Inn, Jackson Visitor Center, the National Park Inn, and a number of gift shops and cafeterias.

Even though he’s been away from Yosemite for more than a decade now, Jay said he still feels like he was working there last year. He attributes that feeling to the magic of national parks.

“The first time I experienced Yosemite’s High Sierra Camps, it was incredible,” Jay told me. “I thought, this should never change – I’m going to do everything I can to protect this experience. Everyone needs to have the same experience I had. And that’s what every job is like in the national parks. When you work for national parks, you need to figure out how to get things done.”

Getting things done for Jay includes managing properties, but also managing people. And not just people, but parks people, the eccentric milieu of characters who choose to all live together in the wilderness.

Last Thursday, when I walked into the National Park Inn and met the people who worked there, I was instantly transported back to my time working in Yosemite. The wonderfully quirky characters were right there behind the front desk and serving food in the restaurant.

“Oh yeah,” Jay confirmed. “The National Park Inn has great people. And they’ve been around forever, they all precede me.”

Back to the National Park Inn

The National Park Inn is decidedly historical, even though it doesn’t have the grandeur (or price) of its big brother, the Paradise Inn, or Yosemite’s Ahwahnee Hotel. But it doesn’t need it.

One of the little secrets about the National Park Inn, Jay confided in me, is that it rarely snows there. Even though it’s basically on Mount Rainier, it sits at 2,700 feet, is open year-round, and boasts lower elevation trails that are nearly always clear. But I got lucky and caught it on a rare early April snowstorm.

At only six miles from the park entrance, it’s quite easy to access, and with plenty of open rooms to choose from in the winter and early spring months, it’s downright affordable for national park lodging, with rooms currently starting around $130/night.

“There are so many good little things about the National Park Inn,” Jay continued. “It’s a nice place to squirrel yourself away and sit by the fire and play some games in the winter. We have a lot of returning people who do that as a tradition. Some family members meet up there once a year, or groups of ladies, or old married couples. They just sit and talk and tell stories, have a glass of wine, and sit by the fire.

“Everybody thinks you can’t go into Mount Rainier National Park and stay anywhere in the winter. But, in the winter, with no lines, you just breeze right on through, and you’re at the National Park Inn in no time.”

One of the packages Rainier Guest Services is running right now is a forest bathing experience called Relax, Renew, Rainier, and it’s entirely engineered to help de-stress people from their city lives. It includes 30% off your room rate, a forest bathing journal, and a free mug of hot cocoa.

Walking into national parks always helps me remember why they’re so important to protect. And looking up at the National Park Inn helped me remember why old buildings and structures are important to protect.

But it took talking to Jay to remind me why the people who visit national parks and park employees themselves are important to protect.

It’s all part of the nature experience.