Then and Now: Lake Quinault Lodge
Before President Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited the Olympic Peninsula, before his distant cousin – President Theodore Roosevelt – set the land aside to protect it from development at the beginning of the last century, and long before the first European and American homesteaders began taking advantage of the federal government’s Donation Land Claim Act in 1850, there were the Quinaults.
The president met with a large crowd of Quinaults in the spacious lobby of Lake Quinault Lodge when he visited there in 1937. The Native American children in traditional dress displayed some of their crafts and treated the president to a presentation by children of the nearby Taholah Indian School as well as a traditional Indian warrior display of strength…dozens of costumed tribesmen in dual war canoes paddling at great speeds as the motorcade passed.