Year-round historic lodge in Mount Rainier's Longmire district, offering unplugged rooms, a stone fireplace, and a classic veranda.
The National Park Inn, located in the historic Longmire District of Mount Rainier National Park, is the only lodging in the park that remains open year-round. Situated at an elevation of 2,700 feet, the inn offers a quiet, low-elevation alternative to the grander Paradise Inn up the mountain. The building itself has a winding history that began in 1916 when it was constructed as a two-story annex for the competing Longmire Springs Hotel. In 1920, the newly formed Rainier National Park Company moved the annex across the road to sit adjacent to the original 1906 National Park Inn. When a devastating fire destroyed the original 1906 structure in 1926, the untouched annex was renamed the National Park Inn and became the centerpiece of the property. Today, it stands as a National Historic Landmark, flanked by the adjacent General Store, which once served as the property's clubhouse.
The inn maintains a deliberate, unplugged simplicity with 25 cozy guest rooms that are entirely free of televisions, telephones, and Wi-Fi. Eighteen of these rooms feature private bathrooms, while seven share communal facilities, and all but two accessible ground-floor rooms require navigating the stairs to the second floor. The heart of the indoor experience is the guest lounge, a cozy library room anchored by an oversized stone fireplace built from local glacial river rock. Outside, the signature feature of the inn is its broad wooden veranda. Lined with comfortable chairs, this front porch looks directly across the road toward Longmire Meadow, where geothermal mineral springs bubble among the ferns, and offers a clear view of Tahoma (Mount Rainier) on a clear day.
Dining at the inn is hosted in the National Park Inn Restaurant, a casual, family-friendly dining room that serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner daily. The menu highlights classic Pacific Northwest flavors, featuring signature dishes such as cedar-plank red trout, home-style pot roast, and bourbon buffalo meatloaf, finished with warm blackberry cobbler topped with vanilla ice cream. Next door, the historic clubhouse-turned-General-Store provides basic groceries, firewood, and souvenirs, and transitions into a winter recreation hub renting snowshoes to visitors exploring the surrounding snow-dusted old-growth forests. Because the inn sits at a lower elevation than Paradise, it rarely receives the same extreme snowpack, making the surrounding trails like the Trail of the Shadows accessible for hiking nearly all year long.
Grab a rocking chair on the front porch with a hot drink to watch the sunset over Tahoma, or head next door to the General Store to rent snowshoes for a winter hike along the Trail of the Shadows.
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