Pierce County code officers boarded up the Gateway Inn near Mount Rainier National Park on August 5 and shut off its utilities, but the aging hotel kept renting rooms anyway, leaving unsuspecting travelers to pack their belongings by cellphone flashlight in the middle of their vacations. Among them was Melissa MacDonald, a 50-year-old paralegal from Edmonds who arrived on August 14 expecting a bed for the night before her planned hike around Paradise, only to find the place boarded shut with health-department closure signs posted on the doors.
MacDonald had booked her stay through Booking.com back in May, and the site accepted her reservation without ever telling her that Pierce County had actually closed the property months earlier, in February, according to The News Tribune. She had stayed at the Gateway Inn in 2021 and 2022 and even summited Mount Baker and Mount Rainier during past trips through the area, so the closure caught her off guard. Booking.com eventually refunded her money, but only after a 10-day wait, and the platform did not stop accepting reservations for the property until August 26 — just one day before this story published.
The Gateway Inn dates back to 1935, when it served early adventurers heading into Mount Rainier National Park, and by the 1950s it had grown into a small complex of cabins, a restaurant, and a general store. It last underwent renovation in 1986 and, according to online travel sites and social media, had deteriorated significantly in the years since. Before its August shutdown, the inn held a 3.3-star rating across 453 Google reviews, with guests frequently reporting bedbugs, no hot water, and broken room appliances, per MyNorthwest.
A Closure Order That Never Stuck
Pierce County first closed the Gateway Inn in February 2026, but the owner kept renting rooms after that order and later removed the county's closure signage, according to county spokesperson Christina Rohila. The closure order never expired, and the violations behind it remain uncorrected, Rohila said. County inspectors had identified a long list of life-safety problems at the property, including unsafe exits, non-working smoke detectors, dangerous electrical conditions, chimney problems posing smoke and carbon monoxide risks, and unpermitted construction.
When code enforcement returned on August 5, they said the inn had reopened illegally. Utility workers cut power to the property at 1 p.m. that day as part of the county's Do Not Occupy order, forcing families who were still staying there to gather their things by phone flashlight, as SFGATE reported. A county code enforcement officer spoke with 10 families on-site that day, all of whom declined offers of human-services assistance. The News Tribune reported that the Gateway Inn owners did not reply to requests for comment by publication time, though the owner has told the county they are working to address the violations.
Scrambling For A Bed Near The Park
With nowhere to sleep, MacDonald ended up spending the night at Whittaker's Bunkhouse, which had one remaining bunk available in a shared room. She wound up sharing that room with two men in their 20s and left before 5 a.m. the next morning. Built in 1912 to house logging workers and renovated in 1990 by mountaineer Lou Whittaker, the bunkhouse offers 18 private rooms and a six-bed shared hostel bunkroom about six miles from the park's Nisqually gate.
MacDonald managed to secure a cabin at Nisqually Lodge for the following two nights and pressed ahead with her plans to hike around Paradise on Saturday and camp at Camp Muir on Sunday. She said the trip remained worthwhile despite the rocky start, and told The News Tribune she would return to the Gateway Inn someday if it were brought up to code and modernized. Nisqually Lodge, located five miles from the park entrance, is one of only a handful of lodging options immediately available in Ashford, the tiny unincorporated community that serves as the park's main gateway.
A Squeeze Years In The Making
The loss of the Gateway Inn's 37 keys — 14 hotel rooms, 15 cabins, and eight RV sites, according to a commercial listing that put the property up for sale for $3.75 million last September — hit at a particularly bad moment for the region's already thin lodging supply. Mount Rainier National Park drew 2,405,012 visitors in 2025, more than 500,000 above 2016 levels, per the National Park Service. That surge came as the Park Service dropped its pilot timed-entry reservation system for 2026, allowing unrestricted vehicle access throughout the summer peak season.
The strain wasn't limited to Ashford. Some stranded travelers ended up seeking rooms at Packwood Lodge in Lewis County, nearly an hour's drive away, according to The Chronicle. The regional squeeze has been building for more than a year: Hoodline previously reported on the Fairfax Bridge closure, which cut off public vehicle access to the park's Mowich Lake entrance and pushed even more traffic toward Nisqually.
What Happens Next
Under Pierce County code enforcement rules, property owners running unsafe or unpermitted buildings can face civil penalties of up to $1,000 per day, a non-compliance certificate placed on the property title, or criminal misdemeanor charges. The county has said it may pursue civil penalties against the Gateway Inn's owner if the violations aren't resolved. Rohila said the property cannot reopen until the life-safety violations are corrected, the required permits are issued, inspections are completed, and Pierce County authorizes occupancy again.
For now, the Gateway Inn sits boarded up just outside the park's only year-round entrance, its future tied up in a sale listing and a stack of unresolved code violations. Whoever eventually buys the 2.7-acre property will face significant costs to fix the underlying problems before Pierce County will let guests back through the doors.
