Celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month with Washington’s National Park Fund

September 15, 2023

By Washington’s National Park Fund’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee

From September 15 to October 15, and throughout the year, the National Park Service celebrates the diverse histories, heritage, and accomplishments of Hispanic and Latino/a or Latinx Americans. The NPS highlights how parks and their programs bring everyone to come out and enjoy their public lands. Washington’s National Park Fund is proud to be a part of this tradition with our park partners: Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks.

In 2022, WNPF updated our project funding priorities to feature a new category, Embracing Inclusion, that enables donors to contribute directly to programs that promote park access to underrepresented and historically marginalized communities. These projects support an environment in the parks where people who experience more life barriers based on their identities can feel welcome and that they belong. One such program hired bilingual rangers to welcome Spanish speakers at Mount Rainier National Park.

See the importance of projects that help Washington’s national parks open their doors to new visitors.

The Start of a Celebration

Every year from September 15 to October 15, Americans observe National Hispanic Heritage Month by celebrating the many histories, legacies, and contributions of people past and present in the United States with ancestral or cultural roots in Spain, Mexico, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and Central and South America. The observation started in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week under President Lyndon Johnson and was broadened by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 to span the 30-day period starting on September 15 and ending on October 15.

The start day of September 15 is significant because it coincides with Independence Day in the Central American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In Mexico, September 16 marks the beginning of the country’s struggle for independence, and Chile celebrates its independence proclamation on September 18. October 12, officially the federal Columbus Day holiday, is alternatively celebrated as Día de la Raza, Día de la Hispanidad, and Indigenous People’s Day. 

A Rich, Proud Heritage

More than 500 years of Hispanic and Latino/a or Latinx history and heritage can be found in national parks or is shared through National Park Service programs and partners in communities across the country.

Meet NPS and other Department of the Interior staff as they share their backgrounds and get just a small taste of the immense diversity of the Hispanic and Latinx experience (video made in partnership with the Department of the Interior’s National Association of Hispanic Employees and National Park Service’s Hispanic Organization on Relevancy, Advising, Leadership, and Excellence):

Video by the NPS
Hear the experiences of park staff by clicking this image.

Did you know?

  • Washington State is home to more than 1,023,000 people who identify themselves as Hispanic or Latinx, representing over 13 percent of the state’s population.
  • The area’s first documented connection to Spain and colonial Spanish America dates to 1774, when an expedition led by Spanish navigator Juan José Pérez Hernández with a mostly Mexican crew of 88 men set out from San Blas, Mexico (near today’s Puerto Vallarta) along the Pacific coast, reaching Vancouver Island. His crew saw the Olympic Mountains and gave Mount Olympus the name Cerro Nevado de Santa Rosalía. A year later, another Spanish expedition went ashore in Grenville Bay, southwest of Olympic National Park, in the present-day Quinault Indian Reservation.  This was a full 16 years before English explorer George Vancouver sailed into the Pacific Northwest.
     
  • At the national level, in 2021, over 297 million people visited national parks (4.4 million of those visitors at Washington State’s three national parks) but recent estimates place Hispanic and Latinx visitation rates at only about 9 percent, despite accounting for 18.5 percent of the nation’s population. Hispanic and Latinx workers are also underrepresented in parks employment, adding up to just 5.6 percent of the NPS general workforce. The good news is that these are numbers that are growing thanks to the dedicated efforts of the NPS and its partners and supporters.

Honoring Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Within Our Community

For many years, WNPF has partnered with park leadership to fund programs designed to create and expand opportunities for underrepresented communities in the Parks. 

In the fall of 2019, WNPF cost shared a day visit by Seattle’s Casa Latina workers and their families to Paradise, in Mount Rainier National Park, an experience which we hope to repeat soon. In 2020, during the pandemic, the Fund hosted a Spanish-English bilingual virtual Junior Ranger program about Mount Rainier, led by a Park Ranger who was a Spanish native speaker. 

Every year since 2016, the Fund has partnered with Washington Trails Association (WTA) to support a Latina trail crew at Mount Rainier, making it possible for up to eight young Latinas, some of whom were new to camping and the outdoors, to complete trail work at the park. 

And in the most recent years, one of our board members volunteered their time to translate many of the Mount Rainier National Park webpages into Spanish. The result is now one of the most comprehensive bilingual sites in the entire National Park Service, which has received thousands of hits since its initial launch in July 2020. 

This work, a collaborative effort with Mount Rainier National Park, is showcased as one of four bilingual English-Spanish websites on this year’s NPS Hispanic Heritage Month page.

Screenshot of the Spanish language webpage
Visit the home page of the Spanish-translated website for Mount Rainier National Park by clicking this image.

We encourage you to join us in continuing to make these and other exciting programs a reality with your gift to Washington’s National Park Fund.

Learn More & Be Inspired

For more information on the National Hispanic Heritage Month celebration and on Hispanic and Latinx communities in the outdoors, please visit:

Washington’s National Park Fund is committed to equity and inclusion of all people, a commitment we share with the National Park Service and Washington’s three largest national parks. We strongly believe that by actively funding projects that give access and opportunities to traditionally underrepresented communities — and by building an organization whose donors and partners represent diverse cultures, backgrounds, and life experiences — we become more fruitful stewards and champions of Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on September of 2022.

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