This Map of the Month appeared in the December 2005 issue of Trains magazine.
Among the many hazards of running trains at high elevations in North America are the difficulties of snow, ice, and avalanche. This was well illustrated in Washington state where the Great Northern crossed the Cascades at Stevens Pass, named for John F. Stevens, the engineer who discovered it in 1890.
Great Northern built Cascade Tunnel in 1900 to bypass a series of switchbacks, which were its first way across the range at the 4,000-foot elevation. Even on the new route, which was below 3,400 feet in elevation and included snowsheds, heavy snows often delayed trains for days. In 1910, a pair of snowslides trapped two trains for days at Wellington, just outside Cascade Tunnel, and on March 1, an avalanche swept down Windy Mountain, knocking both trains off the hillside into Tye Creek, killing 96 in one of the worst U.S. rail tragedies in terms of lives lost.
Following the disaster, GN set about the construction of additional snowsheds between Wellington, later renamed Tye, and Scenic, the site of a hotel in the early 1900s.
Between 1910 and 1917, the GN put a wood or concrete roof over much of the 9 miles between Cascade Tunnel and Scenic. Trains passed safely until 1929 when the railway opened its second Cascade Tunnel at an elevation just below 2,900 feet.
The 7.79-mile-long “new” Cascade Tunnel, well known as the nation’s longest railway tunnel, still carries BNSF Railway traffic, including Amtrak’s Empire Builder.
On the abandoned grade to the old tunnel, the sounds of hikers’ boots have replaced the squeal of brakeshoes and the bark of steam locomotives. The popular Iron Goat Trail starts at Scenic for a journey best enjoyed in the summer months, when the trails that connect to the snowsheds are not knee-deep in white stuff.
Railroads included in this map:
Great Northern, Burlington Northern, BNSF Railway
