The Great Cascade Tunnel Dream
A retired Army engineer revives a massive, fifty-million-dollar plan to bore through the Cascades to bring Seattle closer to the Columbia River.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The plan to build a thirty-mile tunnel under the Cascade mountains, connecting Seattle with Eastern Washington by rail with no heavy grades, has been revived by General B. M. Chittenden, retired general of engineers, U. S. Army, and is receiving serious attention. General Chittenden’s plan calls for a tunnel from Skykomish to Leavenworth, two points on the Great Northern line which would eliminate all heavy mountain grades and permit trains to speed from Seattle to the Columbia River at sixty miles an hour. The expense of the project is estimated at from forty to fifty millions, and there is talk of attempting to finance the plan with public credits, and make the route a common user right of way.
“The growth of the oversea commerce of Puget Sound has been so phenomenal since the war began that business men feel some steps should be taken to insure a continuance of this state.”
This proposal for a low-altitude crossing represents the perennial Washington struggle to overcome the mountain barrier. While this specific tunnel wasn't built exactly as described, the ongoing conversation about high-speed rail across the Cascades shows the state is still chasing the same dream of rapid connectivity.
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