The first white settler to take a donation claim by the lake, Henry de la Bushalier, tried to rename the lake after himself. That faded away with his death one year later. In 1890 the area was renamed Lake Park as a planned community by the Lake Park Land, Railway and Improvement Company, which bought all the nearby land east of the lake and built a rail line to its recreation mecca on the shore of Spanaway Lake. When Mount Rainier National Park was established in 1899, tourists would take the train to its terminus in Lake Park and from there make the two-day journey to Mount Rainier, making Spanaway the original gateway to Mount Rainier. The journey was made by stagecoach, with an overnight stop in Eatonville; the route was in operation as early as 1893.