March 2, 2024 marks the 125th birthday of Mount Rainier National Park, the nation’s fourth National Park and the literal centerpiece of Washington state’s beauty.
Established on March 2, 1899, Mt. Rainier joined Yellowstone, Sequoia, and Yosemite in the exclusive club of U.S. National Parks.
Automobile tourism was closely linked to the park from nearly the beginning, given its proximity to the major population centers of Tacoma and Seattle and its creation just before the automobile industry boomed. It was a popular destination for personal vehicles, and also reachable via regular bus travel.
Below are overviews of early vehicles in the park, from the iconic tour buses to park service vehicles, and the licenses and permits issued for personal automobile travels.
Information wanted! As a certified nerd of both Washington license plates and the National Park Service, I am always looking for new information, artifacts, or photos related to vehicle licensing in Mt. Rainier National Park. Please contact me to chat or share more about this subject.
Early Mt. Rainier National Park buses
Tourism at Mount Rainier National Park in the early 20th century was dominated by the Rainier National Park Company. The company built and ran the inns and lodges inside the park, and started operating bus and stage service early on. This service quickly became a monopoly: in 1921, the Rainier National Park Company was awarded sole rights to operate for-hire vehicles to and within the park. It provided regular bus service to the park from Seattle, Tacoma, and later Yakima and other cities.
The company’s fleet of buses make frequent appearances in photographs into the 1950s.
These buses were licensed in Washington state in the Stage vehicle class. Stages were defined as passenger-carrying vehicles operating on fixed routes between cities, and were relatively small in number in Washington. From 1917 to 1935, stage license plates in Washington were defined by a small “S” letter designator in place of the normal “X” for passenger cars; from 1936 to 1942 “STAGE” was spelled out to the left of the numbers, and from 1945 through 1957 a simple “ST” prefix or suffix was used.
The Rainier National Park Company invested in a sizeable fleet of open-topped buses in the mid-1920s, built locally by the Seattle Transportation Company and Pioneer Auto Works with custom bodies on White truck chassis.
Later Mt. Rainier National Park buses
The late 1930s saw the addition of more modern buses to the Rainier National Park Company fleet, including several locally built by the Kenworth Truck Company of Seattle.
Perhaps the best photo of these buses is this classic, high-resolution shot of five buses pulling up to Ricksecker Point in the National Park:
At some point in the 1930s, the National Park Service began issuing Public Utility Operator license plates to private entities conducting business inside the park. These were used in conjunction with state-issued plates, which were required for travel outside the park’s borders.
These license plates were made of porcelain, with “Public Utility Operator” stacked to the left of the numerals and “Mt. Rainier Nat Park” along the bottom. Similar plates are known for Yellowstone National Park.
The Rainier National Park Company’s iconic 1930s touring coaches, similar to the well-known classic buses in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, all wore these license plates from the 1930s into the 1950s. Historic photos show the Rainier buses all displaying numbers in the 70s on their license plates, suggesting the National Park Service might have allocated a specific number block to Mt. Rainier, with Yellowstone and perhaps other parks assigned lower numbers.
Do you have any additional photos or information about Mt. Rainier National Park Public Utility Operator license plates? Please contact me! I would love to learn and document more about these.
According to the Washington Automobile License Directory for 1938, published by the Motor List Company of Seattle, the Rainier National Park Company owned 18 vehicles licensed in the Stage class that year: one Lincoln sedan, three Buick sedans, one Buick bus, eight White buses, and five Kenworth buses. 1938 Stage license 432 was the last entry for the Rainier National Park Company, registered to a 1938 Kenworth bus. This is likely the third vehicle in the main photo above, which lacks license plates and appears to have a temporary license in the windshield; it likely had only just been placed into service.
While the early White buses were still in use in the late 1930s, they seldom appear in photos at that point. The iconic red Kenworth buses, all new in 1937 or 1938, remained in use throughout the 1950s, with a 2009 article in the Tacoma News Tribune giving 1962 as the last date in service.
Mt. Rainier National Park Official Vehicles
Official vehicles owned by the National Park Service itself wore U.S. Government-issued license plates. Before World War II, the National Park Service supplied its own license plates to its vehicles. These special porcelain license plates were used across the country, and had a stacked “USDI” (U.S. Department of Interior) left of the numerals, and “National Park Service” along the bottom.
When the U.S. Government standardized its license plates across agencies, the National Park Service received standard-issue U.S. Government license plates with an I prefix used to denote the Interior Department. Initially these were large license plates with a shield design, which in the 1950s gave way to a more generic design with blue numbers and a red border.
After this standardization, official park vehicles for Mt. Rainier National Park did not have any distinctive license plates unique to the Park Service or to Mt. Rainier National Park itself.
Mt. Rainier National Park Personal Vehicle Licenses
Mt. Rainier was a popular driving adventure for motorists from the earliest years. An article published in the December 1926 issue of the Washington Motorist marveled that 38,626 personal vehicles entered the park that year, and for the first time all 48 states had been represented (and 21 foreign countries!).
One unique and relatively common piece of vehicle-related history from the National Park Service are paper automobile permits that were issued from the early 1920s until the 1960s.
Through the 1950s, these were relatively formal pieces of paper which recorded the dates of entry and the license number of private vehicles entering the park.
In the later 1920s, National Parks adopted a smaller form with a consistent format between parks, each park having its own form number that was used over the years with date revisions and/or printing runs noted in parentheses after. This format appears to have originated in February 1929 and lasted until the early 1950s. From my observations and items in my collection, the park forms were as shown below.
- Yellowstone National Park: Form 10-68a
- Yosemite National Park: Form 10-69a
- Sequoia National Park: Form 10-70a
- Rocky Mountain National Park: Form 10-72a
- Glacier National Park: Form 10-73a
- Crater Lake National Park: Form 10-74a
- Mesa Verde National Park: Form 10-76a
- Grand Canyon National Park: Form 10-170a
- Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks: Form 10-171a
- Mt. Lassen National Park: Form 10-240
- Mt. Rainier National Park: Form 10-241
10-71 and 10-75 are unknown to me. Also unclear is why the last four parks on the list have three-digit suffixes.
By the 1950s, forms were more simplified and no longer recorded the vehicle license numbers.
Mt. Rainier National Park windshield passes
Accompanying private vehicle permits was a more visually striking item: windshield passes used to show a vehicle had paid its entrance fee. These began as huge stickers that eventually were reduced in size to avoid obscuring the view from windshields. The designs were unique to each park, and often turned into souvenirs that people left on their cars long after their trips. They make frequent appearances in old photographs.
The National Park Service has a wonderful history of them.
Information Wanted
I am always very interested to learn and document more the license plates and registration items related to Mt. Rainier National Park and other parts of Washington State history.
Danny's License Plates 