[3][4] Founded around the beginning of the twentieth century, Mazama boomed as the departure point for mining towns in the rugged Harts Pass area, such as Barron, Chancellor, and Robinson.

[6][7] It has been a destination for summer weddings, rock climbing, mountaineering, and winter sports with options for heli-skiing, back-country and cross country skiing.

[10] Forests of native Douglas-fir and Ponderosa pine are widespread in Mazama and its surroundings, with ample Cottonwood along creeks and rivers.

Mazama has a humid continental climate (Köppen Dsb) with warm, dry summers, and cold, snowy winters.

It lies immediately leeward of the North Cascades, which trap much of the precipitation carried from the Pacific Ocean by prevailing westerly winds.

In the 1970s and 1980s, various proposals to build a ski resort on Sandy Butte near Mazama were submitted to the United States Forest Service amid opposition from local residents.

[20] The final iteration of the proposal, named Arrowleaf Resort, was withdrawn in 1999 following a ruling by the Washington State Department of Ecology that denied water rights for the project.