On Day 1, the Wonderland Trail crosses Kautz Creek. This creek originates at Kautz Glacier and is a tributary of the Nisqually River. The creek is notorious for being a severe flooding hazard. According to the USGS, On October 2 and 3, 1947, heavy rains triggered a jökalhaup (glacial lake outburst flood) from the Kautz Glacier- the largest flood after the establishment of the park.
Having lived here for 10 years, I can attest that at times we can get massive rainstorms. In 2006, over 18 inches of rain fell on Mount Rainier in 36 hours, causing flooding, washing out of roads and the disappearance of an entire campground. This event in 1947 caused a mudflow that went for 6 miles downstream. However, that's just one of the ways that nature changes the landscape around us.
Back to Kautz Creek, the creek is named for the glacier, which was named after August Kautz, who in 1857 supposedly was the first person of European descent to climb Mount Rainier. Born in Germany, he emigrated with his parents to America and enlisted in the Union Army for the Mexican-American War. Stationed out in the Northwest after the war, he is noted for defending Chief Leschi, a Nisqually Indian Chief who was wrongly convicted of murder and executed.
I encourage you to look at the Wikipedia references. Too often we pass by oddly named landmarks without really understanding where the names came from. I learned about August Kautz simply because his name happened to be on a map.
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