Natural Splendor It’s All The Things The Lake Quinault Lodge Lacks (Phones, TVs, Faxes) That Put It Above The Rest

The stairs creak. Longtime employees of Lake Quinault Lodge like to think it’s a ghost.

Her name is Beverly. She is said to be a guest who died in her sleep one night, long before TV. That’s what happens to your mind when you’re stuck in the woods, at the edge of a deep blue lake, without electronic gizmos to divert your imagination or engines to squire you around.

At Lake Quinault Lodge, your link to the world is a window. Your room looks out on a lawn that sways down to the lake, a swath of green interrupted only by a game of badminton, the shuttlecock fluttering through the shadow of pine-pocked peaks of Olympic National Park. There are no telephones, no televisions in the guest rooms. They are sparsely decorated, not very comfortable or especially quiet. The term rustic is kind.

The lodge demands that you look out the window and see an otter slipping into the lake. Or a couple, married for decades, soaring on swings down at the playground. The lodge insists that you leave your room. Come to the lobby and talk to other guests.

Built in 1926, the lodge has history without being stuffy and a sense of place without being pushy. “There’s more elk here than people,” said general manager Russell Steele, a Centralia, Wash., native who fled city hotels in Seattle and New Mexico for the Quinault land of elks and lakes.

Scraped trunks on massive Douglas firs are a hint that the Roosevelt elk, a shy and noble animal, visited the Quinault rain forest. These elk are named for Theodore Roosevelt, whose younger cousin left his own mark on the vivid woods. Here, the distinctive lodge was built on a gentle slope where Cascade Creek gurgles into Lake Quinault.

Funded by Hoquiam lumber tycoon Ralph Emerson, the lodge was built in 10 weeks 69 summers ago. The design, a Georgian style with Craftsman touches, Tudor motifs and pure Quinault details, was by Joseph L. Skoog. A Seattle native, trained at the University of Washington, Skoog did work on such diverse designs as Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theater and Hoquiam’s Emerson Hotel.

“The whole affair was pretty much a rush job,” Skoog said in a 1983 interview. “The plans took two weeks to draw, then we worked day and night and weekends.”

From the Grays Harbor area, plus Tacoma and Seattle, came crafts people and artisans who embellished the lodge with medallions and double-hung sashes and small bay windows. Rising 1-1/2 stories at the lodge’s heart is a superb lobby. The vertical-grain fir beams are adorned with stencils of Quinault Indian design - dogs and ducks, deer and dancers, wolves and bears and firestarters.

A massive stone fireplace burns alder logs, warming and illuminating the shadowy room. The lobby has big wicker chairs for guests to sink into their freshly found roles as tourists. There are writing tables, looking out on the lawn and the lake, for composing your thoughts and sending post cards.

The lodge is swell for couples. The serene setting and a lack of golf force people to pay attention to each other. It’s not a great place for kids, who tend to sink into the wicker chairs, roll their eyes and wonder how they got stuck in a place without TV.

A gift shop has encroached on the lobby’s tranquility. But the wicker chairs make a grand place to escape with a good book - the lodge’s guest register. A set of guest registers, dating to 1966, resides on a shelf for peeking at the past.

The best window on the lodge’s legacy is a bay window at the dining room’s east end. In this alcove, on Oct. 1, 1937, Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin ate lunch at Lake Quinault Lodge. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on a 217-mile driving loop of the Olympic Peninsula during a rainstorm, stopped with his party. It included Gov. Clarence D. Martin, Congressmen Monrad Wallgren and Martin Smith, and Senators Louis B. Schwellenbach and the wonderfully named Homer T. Bone.

The politicians wanted the president to transform 682,000 acres of lakes and mountains into a national park. Roosevelt, in a wheelchair, was rolled into the lodge. Children from Quinault School, across the road, and Quinault tribal members, who brought baskets and sculpture, greeted the president.

“It was a drizzly day,” recalled Jean Barkhurst, who works at the lodge’s front desk. She was 10 and dazzled that drizzly day.

“The president was introduced to me and he actually called me by my name,” Barkhurst said. “Can you beat that?”

Roosevelt ate lunch with the politicians from another Washington. The menu, still displayed in the lobby, featured pickled peaches, clam chowder, molded vegetable salad and broiled Chinook salmon with egg sauce. After lunch, Roosevelt lit a cigarette and said, “I’m a satisfied man.”

Nine months later, the president signed legislation that created Olympic National Park. After annexing ocean beaches, the Quinault rain forest and Lake Ozette, the park has 922,000 acres. It reaches almost to the lodge’s front door.

Of the guests returning for the first time since childhood, of the Civilian Conservation Corps workers who built the road and the celebrities like Lily Tomlin and Lincoln Kennedy who come to Lake Quinault to be tourists, one caller who never left was Beverly. She is the lodge’s ghost, a guest who died in her sleep long ago.

“Every once in a while, somebody will see Beverly,” said night manager Vicki Shepard. “I never saw her, but I once had a Grand Marnier cork pop out of a bottle. It flew across the room. Nobody was around, so I figured it had to be Beverly.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO Getting there As the crow flies, Lake Quinault is 70 miles west of Seattle. But it’s approximately a 150-mile drive via Olympia and Aberdeen. Accommodations 92 guest rooms, all with private baths, priced from $92 to $125 a night. No televisions, radios or telephones in guest rooms. The lodge is open year round. The Roosevelt Dining Room offers breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. The Forest Room bar opens at 4 p.m. weekdays and noon weekends. Activities Fishing, hiking, boats, badminton, croquet, indoor swimming pool and spa, and guided van tours of Quinault, Queets and Hoh rain forests. Information Lake Quinault Lodge, P.O. Box 7, Quinault, WA 98575. Telephone (800) 562-6672.