Jerry Edelbrock and the Origins of Olympic

Jerry Edelbrock is a builder: a builder of partnerships, a builder of people and a builder of visions. In 1983, long before the notion of a Yosemite Institute (YI) in Olympic National Park at the Rosemary Inn had come to fruition, Jerry was building the foundation for what was to come. 

Jerry had graduated from University of California Santa Barbara with a degree in ecology and systemic biology and found himself teaching outdoor education at Cachuma Lake in Santa Barbara. He immediately fell in love with teaching kids in the outdoors. During those years, Jerry took a trip to Yosemite National Park and heard from a friend about Yosemite Institute, which was just getting started at the time. Jerry jumped on board and was one of the very first educators at the campus. He temporarily left the valley to get his graduate degree but returned to YI where he was program coordinator for a time. 

After several years of success in Yosemite, there were murmurings of opening a campus in the Pacific Northwest. Jerry once again left the valley and headed north with the group of YI representatives invited to explore various sites in the area. As good friend and comrade Walter Sive writes in a reflection of the times, “Bob Chandler, Superintendent of Olympic National Park, had long hoped for a strong educational program in the park.” 

Upon touring several sites and meeting with various figures in the community, YI leaders decided it was too early in its existence to open a Pacific Northwest campus. Jerry, however, decided to stay in the Port Angeles area. It was summer of 1984 and he launched a program by the name of “Olympic Field Seminars,” a course for adults on everything from mycology to Olympic Peninsula native cultures.

It was during this time that a friendship between Walter and Jerry took root, as Walter was working as assistant manager at the Lake Crescent Lodge at the time and living in the historic Rosemary Inn cabins with the rest of the lodge staff.

Field Seminars continued through 1985-1987 and proved to be extremely popular. The Pacific Northwest National Park and Forest Association acted as an umbrella organization for the programs Jerry developed. During these years, Jerry and Superintendent Bob Chandler brainstormed where they might put in a fixed campus. There were forays to a County Camp (a Park inholding) and a site in the Elwha Valley. But Superintendent Chandler, Jerry and others finally landed on a plan to have the concessioner vacate the Rosemary employee housing site and have the Park provide land and other support for new employee housing. Superintendent Chandler’s leadership ensued that there were significant dollars appropriated for the rebuild of structures at Barnes Point.

By spring of 1987, the Concessioner had vacated Rosemary; the land then reverted to management by the Park Service. The Park immediately began improving the site and some of the historic cabins.

One could say that it was the Rosemary Inn that planted a seed, or perhaps watered a seed that was already planted, in Jerry’s head. “Sensing that the use of Rosemary for a permanent educational campus was imminent, Edelbrock creatively secured all sorts of used furniture, equipment and even whole buildings to later use on the campus,” said Walter.