North Cascades National Park

North Cascades National Park

Happy trails, favorite hikes: North Cascades NP turning 40

A road runs through it — and Rick McGuire is grateful that the framers of North Cascades National Park, a "complex" of parkland and recreation areas that marks its 40th anniversary on Oct. 2, were obligated to stop at a single highway, scenic State Route 20.

"The Forest Service would have put roads up almost every valley if it wasn't for people like Harvey Manning," says McGuire, a board member of the North Cascades Conservation Council (NCCC), a group pivotal to the park's creation (with Manning, the influential hiking-guide author, among its ranks in the early 1960s). "That absolutely was the plan."