09/20/2021
Time for My Search for Alpine Monday. These are excerpts from www.abarim.com/Alpine.htm
Avalanche
An avalanche blocked my path. The lower Iron Goat Trail, near Stevens Pass, Washington, was covered to a depth of more than 20 feet by snow, boulders, shattered trees, and the debris that an avalanche picks up as it roars down a mountainside. There were footprints in the snow. Someone had been foolish enough, or brave enough, to climb over the avalanche. My car was parked 2.5 miles behind me at the Martin Creek Trailhead; I had no incentive to climb over the avalanche and no desire to risk it. Nearly hidden under the avalanche was the concrete backwall of an old snowshed. The shed itself had long since rotted away and collapsed under the weight of 80 winters of neglect. Only the concrete backwall of the snowshed remained. The location of the avalanche that morning is a known avalanche chute, along a route that once was the Great Northern Railway. One hundred years ago the railroad had built a series of showsheds to protect the line from just this sort of accident. All but one of the snowsheds is now gone. The concrete backwalls stand as evidence of what was once there.
The avalanche had roared down the southwest slope of Windy Peak, probably the deadliest mountain for avalanches in the country, covering both the upper and lower Iron Goat Trails. Far more than 100 people have died in avalanches on Windy Peak, most on what is now the upper Iron Goat Trail. Many of those lives were lost when the railroad was operating, and the railroad hadn't used this route since early 1929 when the "new" 8-mile Cascade Tunnel had opened. But, over the years, cross-country skiers, snowmobilers, and hikers had been at risk when traveling in the shadow of Windy Peak. On this day I didn't think I was at risk and I didn't expect an avalanche. It was a little past noon on the 31st of May, 2008. It was nearly summer and the air temperature was about 60 degrees. I don't know how much earlier the avalanche had descended, and I hadn't heard any roar. But it was a warning. This can be dangerous country, very dangerous in Winter, but risky at all times of year.
It was another avalanche that had first interested me in this place. That earlier avalanche, the most deadly in U.S. history, struck the small town of Wellington, Washington in the very early morning of March 1, 1910. According to the official records, 96 people died in that avalanche when 2 Great Northern Railway trains, rotary snowplows, electric engines, and the Cascade Division Superintendent's personal cars were swept into the Tye River 150 feet below Wellington. It was the worst loss of life in a railroad disaster up to that time. Bob Kelly has a fine web site about the Wellington Avalanche at http://myplace.frontier.com/~mvmmvm/ In 2007 Gary Krist wrote an outstanding book, "The White Cascade", about the Wellington Avalanche. In 2009 Martin Burwash wrote "Vis Major", a novel, but a novel that stays very close to the real history, and the real people of the Wellington Avalanche. The Iron Goat Trail now follows the route of the old Great Northern Railway for 9 miles from the old Cascade Tunnel at what once was the town of Wellington, west of Stevens Pass, Washington, to Scenic Hot Springs. In its 9 miles the Iron Goat Trail has an elevation gain of 1000 feet.
I first learned about the Wellington disaster from a small entry in the 1958 World Almanac. I was 11 years old. For years I didn't learn anything more. I didn't even know exactly where Wellington might have been. The Great Northern Railway had renamed the depot as Tye, to erase the memory of the disaster, and abandoned that route completely in 1929. The grandfather of one of my high school friends had lived in Tye for 3 years while working on the "new" 8 mile Cascade Tunnel from 1926 to 1929. He had never heard of Wellington although he lived in it or near it for 3 years. From the Stevens Pass Highway I could see what I now know to have been snowsheds that have gradually collapsed over the years. It was 2001 before I learned the exact location of Wellington. It was 2006 before I visited Wellington for the first time, and walked the upper Iron Goat Trail.
This day in May 2008 was my first walk on the lower Iron Goat Trail. I had walked parts of the upper trail 6 or 7 times, but this morning I had decided to walk the lower trail from Martin Creek to the parking lot at the Windy Point trailhead near Scenic Hot Springs. Blocked by the avalanche, I turned back to walk the 2.5 miles to my car. It hadn't been a useless day. I had seen the famous Twin Tunnels of the lower trail, and I had visited the site of Corea, once a stop on the Great Northern Railway. Near Corea 3 original telegraph poles still stood, having survived 80 Cascade Mountain winters.
As I walked back to my car I thought about the trail and the railroad. I had now visited every station location between Cascade Station and Scenic. I had never really visited Scenic, but I had driven by it a hundred times or more. I decided that I would visit every station back down from the mountains to Puget Sound and my home in Edmonds. Scenic was nearby, but I was hungry and I turned west toward Skykomish and the Cascadia Inn, where I would devour a Cadia Burger. In June I intended to visit the tiny station at Scenic, still used by the Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railroad, the successor to the Great Northern Railway.
In June I did visit Scenic. It really isn't much of a place. The hot springs have been closed for many years, and the old resort hotel has been gone just about as long as the old railroad route. The owner of the hot springs has marked it "No Trespassing" - probably because of liability concerns. The only interest at Scenic is that a train is often waiting for its turn to go through the "new" 7.8 mile Cascade Tunnel. It takes a while for the tunnel to clear of exhaust gases from the diesel engines. Powerful fans at the Berne (east) entrance to the tunnel expel the exhaust fumes. Otherwise the tunnel could be a dangerous place to travel. The original 3 mile tunnel from Cascade Station to Wellington had been dangerous in the era of steam engines, and some trainmen (and probably a hobo or two) had been asphyxiated by the noxious fumes of coal-burning steam engines. Great Northern had electrified the original tunnel in 1909. Electric engines pulled the trains through the tunnel - then steam would take over again. The "new" tunnel had been electrified until July 31, 1956. On that day #5018 made the last electrified trip through the tunnel.
Now, for more than 50 years, diesels have carried the load. Often 5 or 6 diesel engines pull a train up the slope and through the Cascade Mountains. Diesels are more efficient for the railroad because it is no longer necessary to waste time coupling electric engines into and out of trains to move through the mountains, and extra train crews at Skykomish and Leavenworth are no longer necessary. The longer tunnel saved the railroad time and money, and it avoided the most dangerous stretch of railroad. The "new" tunnel is nearly 1000 feet lower than the old tunnel. The hazard of snow is greatly reduced by the "new" tunnel, and the hazard of avalanche is almost non-existent.
Corea in May. Scenic in June. In July it would be Alpine. Or would it? First I had to find Alpine. Every old Great Northern station site that I had visited had either been close to Highway 2, which is the Stevens Pass Highway, or on the Iron Goat Trail. Alpine was neither. In fact Alpine didn't seem to be anywhere. The town of Alpine was bigger than any of the other towns and stations that I had visited. Alpine was the biggest town on the Great Northern Railway in the 50 miles between Leavenworth and Skykomish. Skykomish still survives, and Leavenworth thrives despite the loss of the railroad. Alpine didn't survive. It was too high, and too remote, and too far off the highway when the common mode of transportation changed from railroads to highways in the 1920s. Few of us now will drive a mile off the interstate. In 1929 almost no one would drive one mile from the highway and an elevation gain of 500 feet. Alpine died and its location was lost for 80 years.
In 1924 Alpine had been the last town of the "passable highway". On October 31, 1924 the first car to drive over Stevens Pass reached Alpine where is was winched up to the railroad tracks by the Alpine mill. From there the car drove on the railroad ties to Tye and then along the old railroad switchbacks to the Stevens Pass summit. 1 By July 1925 the Stevens Pass Scenic Highway was open and Alpine was a mile off the highway, and within 4 years Alpine had been abandoned. The ghost town of Alpine was somewhere along the present-day BNSF railroad line, but there was apparently no longer a road into the town. The prospect of walking 3 miles along the railroad to find what might not be there was a not very inviting prospect. I used up several weekends testing every road and cowtrail that might get close. No luck. I checked the internet. On the internet I found an interesting web site about Alpine by Patrick Burns, who had also tried to find Alpine, but he had no answer to its location. I had tried the same road he had tried, and, like him, found the prospect of walking the rails for 2 or 3 miles not to my liking.
Patrick Burns is Professor Emeritus at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia. Patrick is an Edmonds, Washington native, the same town I now call home, and in 2009 he moved back to Puget Sound, settling in Mukilteo. But at that time Pat was still living in Georgia. His web site, Alpine Pursuit introduced me for the first time to the work of Seattle author Mary Daheim. Daheim has written a series of mystery books that take place in the mythical town of Alpine, Washington. Except Daheim's Alpine isn't completely mythical. Mary Daheim's grandparents lived many years in Alpine. Mary's mother grew up in Alpine and her parents lived in Alpine during their early married life. Mary Daheim has brought the town of Alpine back to life in her Emma Lord series of mysteries. In the books, Emma Lord is the publisher of the Alpine Advocate newspaper in the town of Alpine that in some alternate universe has survived as a viable town to the present day, and is now the county seat of mythical Skykomish County, Washington. I was not in the habit of reading mysteries, or any fiction for that matter, and I had not heard of Mary Daheim or her books. I did send an email to Pat Burns in which I said, "I am glad there is at least one person in the world who is as big an idiot as I am." Pat didn't take offense, he understood what I meant about this strange obsession when one catches the "Alpine flu".
Apparently I was the only person in the Seattle area who didn't know Mary Daheim and had not read at least one book in the Alpine Advocate series. Jan Kavadas promptly dropped 3 books of the series on my desk to read. I read Alpine Journey and really didn't care for it. Maybe I didn't like Alpine Journey because it didn't happen in Alpine. Of all the books in the series, Alpine Journey has the least to do with Alpine. Alpine Journey doesn't even take place in Washington; almost the entire book takes place in Cannon Beach, Oregon, about as un-Alpine a place as you may find in the Pacific Northwest. A few weeks later, while visiting my friend Bill Longbrake, Bill told me that he, renamed for fiction as Bob Lambrecht, was one of the characters in book 6, Alpine Fury. I then borrowed and read Alpine Fury, and, partly because I could recognize Bill and one of the other characters, I enjoyed the book somewhat more. Fran Uchida, who loaned me Alpine Fury, and Martha Longbrake, Bill's wife and devoted Mary Daheim fan, both suggested that I would enjoy the books more if I started at the beginning with the Alpine Advocate, read through the series, and get to know the characters as they develop. I bought a copy of Alpine Advocate and started there. The advice was correct. Like the Yellow Brick Road it is usually best to start at the beginning. I began to enjoy the books, but this didn't get me any closer to finding Alpine. At the beginning of Alpine Advocate, Mary Daheim included in an Author's Note a brief description of the real Alpine and its founder Carl Lane Clemans, and dedicated the book. "To all those who lived the real Alpine story, and in the process, created a legend. These courageous men and women embodied the spirit of the Pacific Northwest." 2 I would later find that Clemans had been a remarkable man, better known for many things than just the founder of a small town in the Washington Cascades. Mary Daheim has almost single-handedly kept the name of Alpine alive for nearly 2 decades. Now it was up to me to find Alpine if it was really there to find. I was warned that there was little left of the town. The Wikipedia listing says that all that remains of Alpine are 2 cornerstones of the mill. Maybe that would be all that I would find, but by now I was determined to find it. If you have visited a rain forest you know how difficult it may be to find anything, even if you know that it is there. In the dry Southwest the buildings of a ghost town may linger for centuries; in the wet of a Pacific Northwest rain forest a town may rot away in a couple of generations. That was the challenge. What to do now?
Bob Kelly, at the Skykomish Museum, gave me a railroad milepost at 1723.5 (measured from the beginning of the old Great Northern Railway in St Paul), but that was 2 miles from the nearest way in to Alpine that I had found. In early August my daughter, Chrissy, accompanied me on road searches. That she barely tolerated old dad's eccentricities was more like it, and she went along because my daughters are always afraid that dad will drive off a road 50 miles from nowhere and the body won't be found until the next year. On the Foss River Road, just past where the road crosses the Foss River on a one-lane bridge, was a road that looked promising, Forest Service Road 6180. After traveling east less than 2 miles our journey on that road came to an end at a "Private Property" sign. Many months later I learned that this old, weary, poorly-maintained, dirt road has a story to tell. According to King County tax records, this old road, east from Foss River, is the original Stevens Pass Scenic Highway, abandoned by Washington State in 1940. Bob Kelly says that oldtimers in Skykomish remembered driving that road to dances in Alpine. But for me the road no longer went as far as Alpine. Too bad. Chrissy and I climbed up the slope next to the Foss River trestle. The railroad milepost read 1728.2 - we wouldn't get into Alpine from there. I didn't know that help was nearby, virtually in the noon shadow of the Foss River trestle in the form of Pat Casey, the Foss River Hermit. I wouldn't meet Pat for another month.
The Alpine depot had originally been named Nippon. Japanese railroad workers may have lived in Nippon while the railroad was constructed in the early 1890s. Or the name Nippon may have been just another international name applied to the Great Northern Railway. James Hill, the "Empire Builder" as he was later known, believed that he could transport the goods of Asia and Europe across a North American railroad link. Goods could travel from Seattle to New York in days, instead of the weeks or months that it would take a ship to travel the distance. The Panama Canal didn't exist in 1890. European and Pacific names dotted the Great Northern Railway. In Washington there were Nippon, Tokio, Corea, Tonga, Berlin, Wellington, and Krupp. It is doubtful that the towns were inhabited by Japanese, Koreans, Polynesians, English, and Germans. It is more likely that the name was just a name in the worldwide vocabulary of the Great Northern. The name on the Nippon Depot wasn't changed to Alpine until 1914. The Post Office had called the town Alpine for postal purposes since the founding of the town in April 1910. Why, don't know? But Carl Clemans, acting as postmaster of Alpine, stated it well in a letter to M. J. Costello, traffic manager for the Great Northern Railway, when he said, "We would therefore respectfully request that the name of the station be changed to "Alpine" which on account of the character of the country seems a fitting appellation." 3 We do know that the Post Office declined the name of Nippon because there was already a Nippon Postal Office in Seattle. Maybe Carl Clemans had used the same reasoning in selecting the Alpine for the Post Office name when he discovered in 1910 that it couldn't be called Nippon.
Clemans was more than the postmaster of Alpine. Alpine was a company town and Carl Clemans ran the company. But the company town image that most of us envision apparently doesn't fit in the case of Alpine. Copies of several of the Alpine annual reports still exist at the Skykomish Museum. In those reports are the record of births, deaths, and marriages, the date of the last snow visible on Mount Baldy across the Tye River valley, the date of the first new snow on Baldy, and the usual company records that you would expect in an annual report. In those annual reports Mr Clemans seems to take great pride in the success of his former employees. He proudly talks about former employees who are now mill owners or lumber company owners themselves, or who have moved to other occupations in the city. There is a sense, almost, of a parent talking about his sons who have gone on and succeeded in the world.
The annual reports were given to attendees at the Alpine annual banquet. The name of the company remained the Nippon Lumber Company for many years after the depot was renamed Alpine, but in 1920 the name of the company itself was changed to the Alpine Lumber Company. Throughout the twenties the company, the depot, the post office, and the town itself went by the name of Alpine. Then the twenties ended and so did the town, almost lost to memory. I wanted to find Alpine, whatever little might remain. In a rain forest that might be little or nothing. I had gone looking for the town of Franklin in southeast King County a number of years ago and had found almost nothing. I might find almost nothing of Alpine, but once I had found it I could move on down the Tye and Sky River valleys to the locations of old Great Northern Railway stops at Tonga and Berlin/Miller River and Grotto and Baring and Halford and Heybrook.
The storied ghost town of Alpine, Washington lay hidden in the second-growth forest of Washington's Cascade Mountains for 80 years on the northern slope of a ridge that extends from Mt Sawyer. Only in the last 4 years has Alpine been found again, and we have begun to map the remaining ruins. Alpine,...
