MORA BLOG ITEM TWO:
How we got here.
by Doug Evans
Among the greatest joys of my life was the privilege of growing up in a National Park Service family in Mount Rainier National Park. As I reflect back on those years now I can see so clearly how my character, personality, and attitudes were molded by the experiences and the many wonderful people with whom I was associated during those times. I have always heard the National Park Service referred to as a family: the National Park Service Family. This seemed perfectly natural to me. I never could have thought of it otherwise. My dad and granddad were living and working in Mount Rainier National Park before there was a National Park Service. So, when the Service was born in 1916 it simply became a new aspect of the family. I grew up regarding members of the Longmire community as extended family. Even now, decades later, I still feel the same: once Park Service Family, always Park Service Family.
My granddad, Ike Evans, and his brother Sherman, were among the founders of the Paradise Mining and Milling Company in about 1906. They staked a copper claim on the lower slopes of Eagle Peak, with a level millsite across the Nisqually River, directly across the Paradise Road from today’s Cougar Rock Campground. The Evans family lived in the Roy-Spanaway area during those early years. But, they built three residential cabins on the millsite where they lived part time while working the mine. When school let out in spring, my dad, Henry, would accompany his dad to the mine millsite for the summer. As I was growing up there, many years later, he told me stories of running down the trail to “the Springs”, as Longmire was called then, to play with the Longmire boys. The Longmires had horses and burros that the boys rode around the meadows.
Decades later it was my great fortune and pleasure to live at the millsite, too, and run the same trail down to Longmire to play with the kids of my generation. More about that later.
How we got here.
by Doug Evans
Among the greatest joys of my life was the privilege of growing up in a National Park Service family in Mount Rainier National Park. As I reflect back on those years now I can see so clearly how my character, personality, and attitudes were molded by the experiences and the many wonderful people with whom I was associated during those times. I have always heard the National Park Service referred to as a family: the National Park Service Family. This seemed perfectly natural to me. I never could have thought of it otherwise. My dad and granddad were living and working in Mount Rainier National Park before there was a National Park Service. So, when the Service was born in 1916 it simply became a new aspect of the family. I grew up regarding members of the Longmire community as extended family. Even now, decades later, I still feel the same: once Park Service Family, always Park Service Family.
My granddad, Ike Evans, and his brother Sherman, were among the founders of the Paradise Mining and Milling Company in about 1906. They staked a copper claim on the lower slopes of Eagle Peak, with a level millsite across the Nisqually River, directly across the Paradise Road from today’s Cougar Rock Campground. The Evans family lived in the Roy-Spanaway area during those early years. But, they built three residential cabins on the millsite where they lived part time while working the mine. When school let out in spring, my dad, Henry, would accompany his dad to the mine millsite for the summer. As I was growing up there, many years later, he told me stories of running down the trail to “the Springs”, as Longmire was called then, to play with the Longmire boys. The Longmires had horses and burros that the boys rode around the meadows.
Decades later it was my great fortune and pleasure to live at the millsite, too, and run the same trail down to Longmire to play with the kids of my generation. More about that later.
PHOTO: Henry Evans (left) with his two younger sisters and an unidentified man on the Paradise Road below the snout of the Nisqually Glacier, about 1914-15.
