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Mount Rainier at sunset. (Shutterstock photo)

The Forgotten Mount Rainier Rescue That Changed America

An 1898 rescue linked a photographer to two men who would help define conservation in the United States

Back Article Jun 11, 2026 By Scott Thomas Anderson

This story is part of our June 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here.

This story is part of our June 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here.

Lifting more than 14,400 feet into the clouds, Mount Rainier is not just the tallest peak by elevation in the contiguous United States — it is the sublime centerpiece of 369 square miles of pristine national park land in the Pacific Northwest.

It’s also a mountain that, for some, taps into our deepest fears.

That reality is on my mind as I hike up its Skyline Trail. I reach a cliffside waterfall below a green stretch of subalpine firs and mountain hemlock that spills across the terrain, separating the sheared gray crags of Rainier’s summit from plum-colored swirls of wildflowers in the meadows.

Such views are what I’d hoped to find when making the 50-minute drive from Tacoma to the little town of Ashford, where I’d rented a cabin at the southwest gateway of the park. This mountain hamlet is an ideal basecamp, with its smiling, storm-hardy locals and restaurant owned by a Nepali immigrant who serves Himalayan food and holds the world speed record on Mount Everest.

Water spills down Myrtle Falls on Mount Rainier’s Skyline Trail. (Photo by Scott Thomas Anderson)

Anyone who has studied the area’s history knows that reaching its stunning vistas can come at a cost. More than 90 people have perished trying to conquer the snowy peaks here, which are so high they often pierce the clouds. Those fatalities don’t even count the volcano’s most infamous enigma: On Dec. 10, 1946, a Curtiss R5C-1 Commando military transport plane collided with one of its 25 glaciers. The violent weather patterns on Rainier that winter were so dangerous that it took rangers nine months to locate the crash site. Once they did, threats of avalanches and rockslides were dire enough that the Pentagon decided to leave the bodies of 32 U.S. Marines permanently encased in the icy wreckage.

Catching my breath above Myrtle Falls, I look up at a vast sheet of whiteness known as the Nisqually Glacier and try to spot the exact ice blanket that the lost marines are sleeping under.

But that wasn’t the story that inspired me to see Mount Rainier. I’ve been more interested in a near-tragedy that was avoided — a tale of heroics that would have lasting implications for cultural and wildlife preservation across our nation.

Views through the generations

On a clear day, the imposing dignity of Rainier can be appreciated 73 miles northwest in the waters of lower Puget Sound. Captain Ethan Allen, who gives boat tours out of a small, gorgeously wooded fishing village called Gig Harbor, is experienced in sharing that view. Allen always makes sure to steer his vessel along the tree line of Point Defiance towards the Tacoma Straits so his passengers can glimpse the volcano’s hulking shape and pearly snowtops dominating the sky. It’s a spectacle that emerges beyond tossing waves and sun-bathing sea lions like some far-off, mist-clad mountain of myth.

A view of Mount Rainier from the Puget Sound.

“We have five different rivers here that all come from that mountain,” Allen mentions while steering his boat. “It’s really incredible. And people who come out here on our harbor tours just love the views of Rainier that we have during beautiful weather.”

This is what Mount Rainier first looked like to Edward Curtis, a young photographer who moved to Seattle in 1887. Curtis took an interest in shooting portraits of Native Americans who lived from Everett to Tacoma. His focus was on capturing tribal members still engaged in traditional fishing, canoe-making and spiritual ceremonies, though he has since been criticized for manipulating images and presenting staged scenes as authentic. Curtis was also obsessed with Rainier, slowly teaching himself to become an expert mountaineer on its most dangerous slopes.

Edward Curtis’ self portrait circa 1899. (Public domain photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Several years ago, I learned from reading Timothy Egan’s nonfiction book, “Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis,” that it was a broader stroke of fortune that Seattle’s best-known photographer took an interest in mountain climbing. Egan’s book recounts how in the summer of 1898, Curtis was taking photographs high on Mount Rainier when he spotted a group of men who were lost and disoriented. The photographer stepped in to guide them from harm’s way.

Two of those rescued turned out to be George Bird Grinnell and Clint Merriam. Grinnell — founder of the Audubon Society — was a journalist and thought-leader who’d go on to be a driving force in the American conservation movement, helping establish a national park, create funding for fish and wildlife management and make sure that buffalo didn’t go extinct. Merriam, a zoologist and ecologist, was one of the founders of the National Geographic Society, which ultimately funded vital scientific and cultural research around the world. In other words, it’s a good thing Curtis was there.

George Bird Grinnell and his wife, Elizabeth Curtis Williams Grinnell, on Grinnell Glacier in 1925. (Public domain photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Grinnell and Merriam didn’t take what he’d done lightly. Both men used their influence and connections to assist Curtis in expanding his quest to photograph Native American cultural ways beyond the Pacific Northwest and across the entire Lower 48. Between 1895 and 1911, Curtis created more than 40,000 images. Though his books and articles, with titles like “Vanishing Indian Types,” fed into the myth of the “disappearing race” that modern Native people are still combating today, he remains an important figure in the history of American photography. He also left behind historic still-frames that are still viewed today at the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institute and the National Museum of the American Indian.

Resting above the waterfall on Rainier, I can’t help but marvel at how the volcano’s equal measures of risk and beauty have impacted what America is over the generations.

Correction June 11, 2026: A previous version of this article misstated the name of a plane that crashed on Mount Rainier. It was a Curtiss R5C-1 Commando, not a Curtis Commando R5C.

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