Gifford Pinchot National Forest

The 15,700-acre Tatoosh Wilderness is bounded on the north by Mount Rainier National Park.  It is steep and rugged with subalpine and alpine areas along the ridgeline. The area also contains 550 acres of the Butter Creek Natural Area. Tatoosh Wilderness includes a variety of physical features, from river bottoms to subalpine ridgetops.

The Tatoosh Wilderness is a relatively recent additions to the Wilderness system. It was officially designated as Wilderness by Congress in 1984.

This area was added to the Wilderness system to protect and preserve the scenic, alpine environments and to conpliment the adjacent Mount Rainier National Park, most of which is also designated as Wilderness.

Tatoosh Ridge (6,310 feet) provides excellent views in all directions and is the former site of a fire lookout built in 1932. This particular lookout gained nororiety after the book "Tatoosh" was published. The author, Martha Hardy, wrote about her experiences keeping watch at the Tatoosh fire lookout.

The Tatoosh Range was used historically by Taidnapam (Upper Cowlitz) Indians. In mid-to-late August, Taidnapam families would climb up the ridge from fishing camps at the confluence of the Muddy Fork and Clear Fork CowlitzRivers, to hunt, gather materials for making baskets, and pick huckleberries for drying.

The dried berries were transported to home villages for eating during the winter months. Archaeological evidence suggests that these high country treks were a long tradition among the local Indian people.

Jim Yoke, a Taidnapam elder interviewed in 1926-1927 by anthropologist Melville Jacobs said this about Tatoosh: "He (Coyote) thought of a mountain, he named it neq'u't* ("breast", Tatoosh). At that place, he determined there would be lots of berries, that people would climb up it, gather those berries, dry them, and descend again to the same place where they were drying fish."

*neq'u't approximate pronunciation: nuk-koot