Lady of the Lake: Olympic National Park

Washington state’s Olympic National is known for its’ towering mountains, sprawling beaches and stunning lakes. It is the latter that has given rise to the park’s most enduring legends, chiefly the Lady of the Lake. But for all that, this beautiful wilderness almost ceased to be.

The park never should have existed. It’s creation came out of clever exploitation of loopholes. When Theodore Roosevelt ascended to the office of the President, he became the first holder of his office to put a focus on preserving natural resources, so future generations could experience their splendor.

But like many men ahead of their time, not everyone appreciated Roosevelt’s foresight. In an age of ever-increasing industrialization, others saw these places only as fuel for furnaces, or obstacles to be removed. And after several years of the President using his powers to preserve the wild places he loved, Congress saw fit to stop him.

In 1905, Senator Charles W. Fulton of Oregon attached a clause to the year’s Agricultural Appropriations Bill, which stated the power to create forest preserves in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Colorado would be solely reserved for Congress.

Roosevelt was in a bind: he could not veto the bill outright without risking the Department of Agriculture having no funds for the next year, leaving hundreds of voters who depended on the department’s aid in the lurch. And it was too late in the Congressional session for long negotiations to have the passage taken out. So instead, he opted to chart his own course.

For two days, Fulton’s bill sat on the President’s desk, while Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot, President Roosevelt and Forestry Department clerks worked to preserve as much as they could before the Congressional session expired. The end result of this marathon sprint was paperwork for executive orders saving 21 forests, and expanding 11 others.

Congress could not stop these orders, save by a vote they had little time to have, and would be immediately vetoed by Roosevelt. Olympic National Forest was created among them, and only after signing off on the executive orders, did Roosevelt sign the Appropriations Act. It would take 33 years for Olympic to gain its’ national park status, appropriately enough at the order of Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

However, long before any Roosevelt got involved with Olympic, the park had already been shaped by a legendary figure. The Jamestown S’Klallam, Lower Elwha Klallam and Port Gamble S’Klallam indigenous nations tell the story of a great battle within the current park’s boundaries that created one of it’s most striking features.

The origins of the dispute are lost to legend. However, in the valley by what would become Lake Crescent, the Klallam and Quilete Nations met in battle. It must have been a throw down of epic proportions, because the fighting disturbed the nearby peak of Mount Storm King. They had woken the mountain, and were soon to pay for their actions.

Enraged that the two groups were fighting, the mountain elected to throw a giant boulder down into the valley. Upon seeing this sign of the displeasure of the Mount, the Klallam and Quilete put an end to the war. The boulder forever changed the geography of the valley, damming up its’ river, and splitting it into Lake Southerland and Lake Crescent.

As a result, the latter lake is said to never give up it’s dead. The Lady of the Lake would eventually prove this wrong, and become the park’s most infamous spirit.

Hallie Latham (on the left in the photograph above) was born in 1901 to Kentucky farmers. Throughout her life, she wandered from job to job and place to place, never truly putting down roots the way she would in death.

By the time Latham arrived in Port Angeles, Washington and became a barmaid at the Lake Crescent Tavern, she had been divorced twice. When Hallie met Montgomery ‘Monty’ Illingworth (in the middle), via his job as a delivery man to the tavern, she soon thought that three times was the charm, and married him in 1936. Unfortunately for her, this very much proved not to be the case.

Illingworth proved incapable of being faithful to his new wife. Far worse, Hallie soon began to come into work covered with bruises and scratches. One assault five months into the marriage proved so loud neighbors called the police, who broke the two apart but did nothing else to intervene. And the assaults would soon prove fatal.

Three days before Christmas 1937, Latham vanished and Illingworth claimed she ran off to Alaska with a sailor. After being granted a divorce a year later, he moved to California with a friend of Hallie’s sister. Few believed him about Latham running off, even before a body surfaced in Lake Crescent 3 years later, wrapped in rope and blankets.

Unlike like most bodies, this one had been almost perfectly preserved by the cold and dark depths of the lake, save for the facial features and fingerprints. Despite that, the hair and build were a perfect match to Hallie’s. But what really sealed the deal on the identification, was when her former dentist recognized the unique dental plate he had made for her.

Owing to the body’s preservation, it was clear Hallie had been beaten, then strangled. Illingworth was extradited from California to stand trial. He still claimed Hallie had run off with another man. However, the dental plate and the rope around her body proved otherwise. The fibers were uniquely of Sears-Roebuck manufacture. After some careful checking of receipts, the rope was tracked to the tavern owner, who had bought it to tie up boats, and recalled Monty borrowing it to pull his truck out of the mud, then never returning it.

After four hours of deliberation, he was convicted of second-degree murder, and sentenced to life in prison, then paroled after just nine years. Perhaps because of this, the ghost of Hallie Latham is said to walk across the Lake and wander its’ trails, begging passerby for help they cannot give. So if you find yourself walking those same paths, keep an eye out, because you might just spot the Lady of Lake Crescent.

Sources:

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/04/06/lady-of-the-lake-2/

https://www.myolympicpark.com/park/history/the-lady-of-crescent-lake/

https://outdoor-society.com/the-hidden-history-of-olympic-national-parks-lake-crescent/

Theodore Rex

Images:

By Dllu - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41139839

By User:Elwhajeff, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60735480

By Adam Cuerden - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID ppmsca.35645.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=144415411

Illingworth murder case newspaper photographs Courtesy Washington Rural Heritage (LKCRPORT013)