WA: Seattle-Portland Amtrak train turns into a ‘rolling national park’

Life moves pretty fast when you’re aboard an Amtrak train chugging along at 80 mph. Some sights — like Mount Rainier — are in view for long, delicious minutes while others — like the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens in Woodland, Clark and Cowlitz counties — are here and gone in the blink of an eye.

“Yeah, you missed it,” Stuart Snyder, a volunteer with the National Park Service Trails & Rails program, chuckles as a passenger asks about catching a view of the lilacs.

Snyder is one of 46 volunteer guides who help turn certain trains into something like rolling national parks, complete with specialized stamps for your National Park Passport. The program is a partnership between Amtrak, the National Park Service and Texas A&M University, and 2025 marks the 25th anniversary.

Of the dozen parks across the country that participate in the program, the Coast Starlight train running between Seattle and Portland saw 40% of the 120,900 passengers who heard the program in 2024 — more passengers than any other route.

You can catch a guide on board seven days a week between April 25 and Sept. 28 on the Coast Starlight. There are also guides on the Empire Builder between Seattle and Wenatchee, on Thursdays and Sundays heading east and Fridays and Mondays heading west.

On the Coast Starlight one recent weekday heading south to Portland, the tour guides — Snyder and Bill Woodward — were having a bit of trouble with the microphone system that allows passengers in the lounge car to hear all the juicy historical tidbits no matter where they are sitting as the guides stroll up and down the car, working the room and answering questions.

“Just project,” Snyder quipped as Woodward began to tell passengers about the Nalley Valley in Tacoma, brandishing a can of Nalley chili as a prop.

They never did get it working during the nearly 200-mile journey, but that didn’t stop Snyder or Woodward from imparting plenty of knowledge along the way.

“This is the Lewis River up here folks, not named for Meriwether Lewis but for a local trapper named A. Lee Lewis,” Snyder boomed. “Unlike the other rivers we’ve crossed, it didn’t start from a glacier in Mount Rainier, but a glacier on Mount Adams, Washington’s second-highest peak.”

Snyder — a guide who has been volunteering on the Trails & Rails program for 19 years after spending a career working for the national parks — and Woodward — a history professor at Seattle Pacific University and guide for the past two years — trade on and off as the train trundles on.

The duo occupies one of the tables in the lounge car. There’s a stack of glossy, historical photos and posters showcasing everything from the iconic FBI sketch of D.B. Cooper to the Nutty Narrows, a squirrel bridge in Longview. There’s also a 100-page binder filled with facts about the route, compiled by different guides over the years. It’s always being updated and added to — keeping the guides on their toes.

“The guides get to pick and choose,” said Sydney Rometsch, park ranger and manager of visitor center operations for the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Seattle, which works on the Trails & Rails Seattle-Portland Coast Starlight program. “They have suggested stops to know, but it can be individualized. Each ride can be different.”

Rometsch, who has been at Klondike Gold Rush for about a year and a half, works closely on Trails & Rails with Jim Eagan, the volunteer coordinator for the program locally.

Eagan has been with the program for a decade. He helps with presentation skills and the annual classroom training for guides. There are also sponsored field trips to places like the Mima Mounds in Thurston County to help guides “see it on the ground close up and not speeding by at 80 mph,” Eagan said.

In addition to knowing the history, guides have to practice pacing and remember smaller landmarks that appear before larger ones; a row of buses before the lilac garden or a massive pile of timber before the massive Hawaiian-style McMenamins lodge in Kalama, Cowlitz County — ensuring they can get the background of the story out before the train whizzes by the point of interest.

Each guide has a favorite story to tell along the route. There are predictable favorites like the D.B. Cooper tale, about the man who hijacked a plane in 1971 and apparently parachuted out with $200,000 in ransom money, never to be found. But Eagan loves talking about the eruption of Mount Rainier some 5,000 years ago that led to a mudflow pushing back Puget Sound and creating what we now know as the Kent Valley.

Snyder loves talking about Billy Frank Jr., the Nisqually tribal member and environmentalist who was integral in the fight for Native fishing rights. Rob Carr, another volunteer guide, loves the tale of George Washington, an African American pioneer and the founder of Centralia.

Above all, each of the guides enjoys the people they meet along the way while working the lounge car, checking in with passengers on where they’re from and where they’re going. Snyder says it’s common to have people from upward of five countries onboard.

Of course, not everyone loves to hear quirky historical facts in the lounge car — even if it is about the Laughlin Round Barn, a strikingly beautiful red barn in Castle Rock, Cowlitz County, that was built in 1883 to help ranchers milk cows more efficiently. It’s now one of only five left in the state.

“I remember distinctly a few years ago getting on in Portland, this guy says real loudly, ‘Oh no, not you guys!’” Eagan said. “So you kind of work with that. But by the time we got to Seattle, that guy shook our hands and said, ‘You guys were really great.’”