Rockport State Park

If the weather turns bad as you are headed to the North Cascades Highway, you can always stop at Rockport State Park and do a short hike. This day-use park offers some of the first old-growth to hike on Highway 20. There is picnic areas and trails, that is about it. The old campground is closed.

In 1885, Leonard Graves homesteaded the land around the present town of Rockport. Graves sold the land to Albert von Pressentin in the 1890s, and within a few years, the town grew to include a hotel, post office, store, school and mills. Ferry services crossed the Skagit River, and daily trains ran between Rockport and Burlington. The property that is now Rockport State Park was owned by Sound Timber Company. In 1935, Sound Timber sold the property to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for $1. Washington State Parks acquired the property from DNR in 1961. The park was a popular destination for tent and RV campers, but in May 2007, Rockport was closed to camping because the old-growth forest was showing signs of structural instability that could have put campers at risk. The old-growth forest is estimated to be 400 to 600 years old, and many of the trees were around prior to Euro-American contact in this country.