Rainier Personalities: Making History on the Mountain

Edmond S. Meany

Courtesy UW Special Collections

If ever Washington had a true Renaissance man, it would be Edmond S. Meany. His name is well recognized around Puget Sound associated with the University of Washington, a hotel, and a mountain in the Olympic National Park...

Fay Fuller

© Mt. Rainier National Park Archives and Museum Collection

In the summer of 1887, just five years after her family left the East Coast to resettle in Tacoma, Fay Fuller age 17, made it her goal to someday climb Mount Rainier. Three years later, Fay was on her way to summiting the 14,411-foot mountain...

Hazard Stevens

Hazard Stevens returned to Washington Territory after the Civil War and in August of 1870, he, along with Philemon B. Van Trump, made the first successful documented ascent of Mount Rainier. The two had a fascination with the mountain and planned for years to summit it...

John Muir

The Sierra Club co-founder, naturalist, and national park activist climbed Mount Rainier in 1888 at age 50 and advocated for its protection as a national park. Muir's expedition to the rooftop of Washington was arduous including a treacherous ford of the Nisqually River and a steep climb to the Paradise Valley...

Philemon Beecher Van Trump

While Van Trump's 1870 first ascent of Mount Rainier had its challenges, it evidently didn't dissuade him from return visits. He made four more documented trips to the summit including one in 1888 in which he guided conservationist and Sierra Club founder John Muir to Rainier's summit...

Sluiskin

In August of 1870, Native American guide and hunter, Sluiskin, led a climbing party consisting of Hazard Stevens, Philemon Beecher Van Trump and Edmund Coleman, intent on becoming the first people to summit Mount Rainier...