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Carbon River Entrance to Mount Rainier National Park

Marked by a building on the bottom of the canyon floor on the brink of the river. The building and the small rustic structures of the ranger station are dwarfed by huge trees. Directly north are the grizzled sides of Burnt Mountain and Carbon Ridge, where the spired peak of Old Baldy Mountain rises 5,790 feet. Once a great fire burned over the slopes of these mountains, leaving only a scattering of white dead trunks. Through a thin covering of second growth, the cliffs and rock slides are grey scars sometimes crossed by the thread of a falling stream. To the south is Tolmie Peak, Castle Rock, and Mother Mountain, whose altitude of 6,540 feet is almost hidden by the heavy growth of timber all about it. From here the road extends almost to the foot of Carbon Glacier, and in the summer time motorists may drive six miles farther east and south almost to the snowline. From the Carbon River Entrance visitors can walk the Carbon River Rain Forest Nature Trail, a three-mile, self-guided trail that winds through the only true inland rain forest at the park, or follow the seven-mile Carbon Glacier Trail.

Points of Interest Points of Interest icon

Upper Fairfax Historic District

This small collection of one and two-story frame buildings along the south side of the Carbon River Canyon are all that remains of the town associated with the Manley-Moore Lumber Mill. The nine structures include the Moore Home, the Collins House, the Gurley Home and the Callahan House all built in 1910, and a schoolhouse, sawmill office and the Parusa Home built in 1919. Manley-Moore started in 1907, and by 1910 began cutting timber along the upper Carbon River. By the 1920s it employed 250 men—mostly southern and eastern Europeans, but also Finns, Swedes, Danes, Greeks, and about 60 Japanese brought here to alleviate a manpower shortage during World War I. The mill manufactured finished lumber products at a site 1,600 feet in elevation, which was considered unusual. The mill never really recovered from a devastating fire in 1918. It was closed in 1936, but the fierce attachment to the town by its workers kept the small community going.

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