Lake Crescent

Klallam legend holds that Mount Storm King, angered by warring tribes, hurled a boulder that split one lake into two — and what resulted was Lake Crescent. Geologists largely agree on the landslide, if not the motive. Glacially carved and fed by low-nitrogen water that keeps algae from taking hold, the lake runs 624 feet deep and holds a blue clarity that has no business existing this close to a highway. That isolation produced two fish found nowhere else on earth: the Beardslee trout and the Crescenti cutthroat.