Season: Year-round
Longmire is located in the southwest corner of Mount Rainier National Park and is 6.5 miles (10.5 km) east of the Nisqually Entrance. The Transportation Exhibit is located inside the historic Longmire Service Station, which is next to the National Park Inn. The exhibit is open daily when the Longmire Museum is open. The exhibit panels are attached to the wall across from the door and consist of five panels with a timeline stretching across the bottom of the panels.

History of Transportation at Mount Rainier

Panel 1 Title: The Route to Resource Stewardship

Panel 1 Main Text
Mount Rainier has drawn people for millennia. Since time immemorial American Indians have traveled to and from the mountain seasonally to pick huckleberries, hunt, and collect native plants for food and medicinal uses. Prior to the establishment of Mount Rainier National Park in 1899, American Indians used the ridges separating major streams as transportation routes to these resource rich parklands.After Mount Rainier’s designation as a national park, it drew visitors looking for recreational activities. As the park’s popularity grew with white settlers in the area, park architects and engineers designed roads, bridges, and buildings that blended with the natural scenery. This type of architecture became known as National Park Service rustic style. Today, our challenge is to accommodate millions of visitors while continuing to preserve park values and resources.

Panel 1 Secondary Text
The Longmire Service Station, built in 1929 along the edge of wilderness. The building was designed with its natural setting in mind; whole logs frame the front porch and the pumps are mounted on an island of glacial stones.As the few remaining NPS rustic style service stations in the United States are altered to accommodate modern vehicles and machinery, this near-original building is a unique example of early national park architecture.

Panel 1 Description
The main text fills the top left quadrant of the panel against a pale blue background. On the top right of the panel is small black and white photo of the historic service station the exhibit is located inside of. The log building has a covered portico with two tall cylindrical gas pumps set into a stone foundation. An old model car is parked under the porch while a man fills it with gas. The secondary text is located under the photo on a white background. The bottom half of the panel is filled with a map of Mount Rainier National Park labeled “2017 Official Mount Rainier National Park Map (edited)”. The park roads are highlighted in red with the main park areas labeled.