During the Summer, I took a walk around Old Wellington.
Now a ghost town, Wellington was a railroad community in King County along the Great Northern Railroad, at the west side of the old Cascade Tunnel, which is now closed.
On March 1st 1910, while two trains were stopped there because of the snow, a quarter-mile wide avalanche hit the snow shed and sent both trains over 150 feet down the mountain into the Tye River Valley. Ninety-six lives were lost; remainders of the railcars wreckages can still be seen at the bottom of the mountain through the vegetation.
Of the snow shed, the initial part still remains today and is part of the Iron Goat Interpretive Site and Trail.
The western portal of the old Cascade Tunnel is also open and can be seen along the trail.
history hiking construction transport snowsheds photography Earchphoto