Mount Rainier is less a mountain than an active volcano wearing 26 named glaciers, the largest single-peak glacial system in the contiguous United States. It rises 14,410 feet above lowland forest that sits near sea level, which is why the summit reads as a floating white mass from downtown Seattle, some 60 miles to the northwest. Most mount rainier national park tour from seattle tours reverse that sightline, running south through Tacoma and Eatonville before entering the Cascade Range at the Nisqually gate. The peak carries two names. Puyallup, Nisqually, Muckleshoot and other Coast Salish peoples knew it as Tahoma; George Vancouver attached the name Rainier in 1792, honouring a British admiral who never saw the mountain. Congress established the park in 1899, the fifth in the national system. Its boundaries enclose 236,381 acres, of which roughly 97 percent was designated wilderness in 1988. The Nisqually Entrance, at 39000 State Route 706 E in Ashford, is the only gate open year-round, and it absorbs the bulk of roughly two million annual visitors. What that protection holds is vertical range. Within a dozen road miles the forest shifts from lowland old growth — Douglas fir and western red cedar past 700 years old — to subalpine meadow, then to pumice and ice. Carbon Glacier descends to about 3,500 feet, the lowest-elevation glacier in the lower 48. Nisqually Glacier has been surveyed since 1857, which makes it one of the longest-studied ice bodies in the hemisphere. Six major rivers begin under that ice, and their meltwater reaches Puget Sound within a day. The subalpine bloom at Paradise — lupine, bistort, avalanche lily — follows snowmelt rather than the calendar. The built landscape is as deliberate as the wild one. Paradise Inn opened in 1917 in the rustic idiom later codified as parkitecture, framed with silvered Alaska cedar salvaged from an 1885 burn. A German carpenter, Hans Fraehnke, built its grandfather clock and the lobby piano. Longmire's 1916 administration building and the 1966 Henry M. Jackson Memorial Visitor Center mark two distinct eras of federal design. A standard vehicle entrance pass costs 30 USD and stays valid for 7 consecutive days, a figure that applies equally to self-drivers and to visitors holding mount rainier national park tour from seattle tickets for a guided departure from the city.