The North Cascades Mountains includes North Cascades National Park, two national recreation areas, three national forests, nine wilderness areas and the Loomis State Forest in Washington, as well as seven provincial parks, one protected area and one recreation area in British Columbia. This region is the largest contiguous body of protected lands along the 4,000-mile U.S.-Canada border. Diablo Lake is not a natural lake, but a reservoir, artificially created by Diablo Dam.
In summer, the distinctive turquoise color of the lake is the result of suspended fine rock particles refracting sunlight. These rock particles, called glacial flour, enter the lake when rock from the surrounding mountains is eroded by ice and flows into the water through glacial streams.
At least 9,000 years ago, as the Cordilleran Ice Sheet retreated, indigenous Northwest peoples began to visit the Upper Skagit Valley and surrounding mountains. Evidence of hunting, gathering, drying salmon and quarrying can be found in more than 160 archeological sites recorded in the upper Skagit. Tribes included the Upper Skagit, Swinomish, Sauk-Suiattle and Nlakapamuk.
The first European explorers arrived in the mid-1800s, followed by prospectors, loggers and homesteaders. In the 1920s, the City of Seattle tapped the Skagit River for power, and the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project commenced building Gorge, Diablo and Ross Dams.
Seattle City Light, a public utility, manages the dams today and they provide more than 25 percent of Seattle’s electricity.
Although the first petition to protect the North Cascades was submitted in 1892, it wasn’t until 1968 that the North Cascades Conservation Council succeeded in engaging broad public support to establish the North Cascades National Park Service Complex, protecting more than 504,700 acres.
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