Hazard Stevens Hazard Stevens ( June 9 , 1842 – October 11 , 1918 ) was an American military officer , mountaineer , politician and writer . He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the Union army during the American Civil War at the Battle of Fort Huger . Stevens and Philemon Beecher Van Trump made the first documented successful climb of Mount Rainier on August 17 , 1870 . Early life and the Civil War . Stevens was born in Newport , Rhode Island on June 9 , 1842 , the son of Isaac I . Stevens and Margaret Hazard Stevens . In 1854 , his father became the first governor of the new Washington Territory and the Stevens family moved to Olympia , Washington . Both father and son volunteered in the Union army during the Civil War and served in the 79th Highlanders of the New York Volunteers . Hazard Stevens was a major and assistant adjutant general . Hazard was wounded and his father , by then a general , was killed in the Battle of Chantilly on September 1 , 1862 . For his contribution to the capture of Fort Huger , Virginia , on April 19 , 1863 , Stevens received the Medal of Honor on June 13 , 1894 . Stevens was mustered out of the Union Army volunteers on September 19 , 1865 . On January 13 , 1866 , President Andrew Johnson nominated Stevens for appointment to the brevet grade of brigadier general of volunteers , to rank from April 2 , 1865 , and the U . S . Senate confirmed the nomination on March 12 , 1866 . After the war and the ascent of Mount Rainier . After the war , Stevens returned to Washington to care for his widowed mother , working initially for the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and then as a federal revenue collector in 1868 . He then met P . B . Van Trump , who was working as the private secretary to Marshall F . Moore , the seventh governor of the territory . Both men were interested in climbing Mount Rainier and on August 17 , 1870 they completed the first documented ascent of the mountain . The " Stevens Van Trump Historic Monument " along the " Skyline Trail " in Mount Rainier National Park was erected to commemorate the historic first ascent of the mountain . Nearby is the " Stevens Canyon " and " Stevens Ridge " , both named after him . Stevens joined the bar in 1871 , representing the Northern Pacific Railroad Company in their prosecution of lumber theft cases . In 1874 , Stevens investigated British claims on the San Juan Islands at the request of President Ulysses S . Grant . Later life . In 1874 , Stevens moved to Dorchester , Massachusetts near Boston . He the entered the Massachusetts state legislature as a reformer in 1885 . He successfully lobbied for the preservation of Boston ' s Old State House . He was unsuccessful in a run for the United States Congress . In 1887 Stevens was admitted to the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati by right of his descent from Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Lyman . Stevens climbed Mount Rainier a second time in 1905 on a trip organized by The Mazamas , an Oregon mountaineering club . Stevens established the Cloverfields Dairy Farm in Olympia , Washington in 1916 . Now on the National Historic Register , the former farm is the site of the present Olympia High School . Later in life , Stevens wrote " " The Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens " " , a noted biography of his father in addition to many papers on the Civil War . He died unmarried in 1918 and is interred at Island Cemetery in Newport , Rhode Island Plot : Lots 650 - 653 . Medal of Honor citation . Rank and Organization : Citation : Gallantly led a party that assaulted and captured the fort .