This Train Is Actually a National Park

When I boarded this Amtrak train, I got the surprise of a lifetime.

I sprang for Amtrak’s Coast Starlight over the cheaper and faster Cascades route from Seattle to Portland, thinking my five-year-old would like the “Sightseer Lounge,” a glass-domed observation and café car. Only once we boarded and started chug-a-lugging south, I realized the extra $15 included my entrance fee to the least discussed and most delightful national park on the map.

I panic-booked the adventure to distract my younger child while her older sister spent the week at sleepaway camp. We planned to splash in the hotel pool, eat plenty of French fries, and hit an amusement park for her first spin on a roller coaster. But for me, the most thrilling ride of our adventure came long before we crossed the Columbia River.

A voice crackled over the intercom as we pulled out of Seattle’s King Street Station. Instead of announcing an upcoming station or interminable delay, it informed us this train was part of Trails & Rails. The little-advertised, unbelievably cool partnership between the National Park Service and Amtrak brings volunteer rangers on to give a casual guided tour along the 175-mile route, making each train its own national park.

The Coast Starlight, which runs south from Seattle to Portland (and on to Los Angeles), participates in the program Wednesdays through Sundays, from April to September. As we sailed south along the Chehalis River, two older gentlemen rangers enthralled the riders gathered in the observation car with fun train facts, information on the passing landscapes, and salacious stories of early Washington State—plus the occasional bad tour guide joke.

Though I have driven, ridden buses, and taken trains between the two cities hundreds of times in my life—and, once, even pedaled my bicycle—I learned something new each time the volunteers picked up their microphones. They gave us a heads-up as to when the train rolled by the only perfect, unencumbered view of Mt. St. Helens and when we whizzed by a really great pizza place—just in case we ever passed back this way.

As a ranger pointed to green fields and explained Washington was the nation’s top mint producer, I asked on Instagram if anyone else had ever accidentally boarded a national park. My followers were as shocked as I was: “I have done the train ride many times and never had that,” one responded. Another wrote: “This has never happened to me on a train to Portland; I feel cheated!”

I learned why the town of Bucoda changed its name from Seatco: The latter was an adaptation of a Salish word for evil spirits, and it seems to have a brutal territorial prison and economy fueled by inmate labor, making it quite susceptible to haunting. I also know that the town of Bucoda existed and is home to one of Washington’s oldest taverns, Joe’s Place (which may be haunted by evil spirits itself, depending on whom you ask).

While one ranger gave the kind of natural, casual three-hour tour people pay significant amounts of money for, another wandered through the cars, answering questions about the places and scenery rolling by. Passengers who knew about the service pulled out their National Parks Passport to collect a coveted stamp from the extension of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park.

Other of the more than a dozen Trails & Rails routes run by the National Park Service and Amtrak are linked to Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail, Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, and Saratoga National Historical Park. On a hidden corner of Amtrak’s website, a page lists the various routes, schedules, and seasons. But the program gets no mention anywhere in the ticket buying process or on the ticket itself.

This is a shame because once I knew of the service, I was ready to fork over all my money to nerd out as I traveled the country. But as a first-time rider, I admit the only thing cooler than a train that’s actually a national park is a surprise national park rhythmically chugging you toward your destination.