Great Northern Construction Struggles in Skykomish
A traveler describes the brutal conditions and industrial progress on the railway line, where snowslides and labor efforts define the route.
The story, cleaned up
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O. J. Noyes, of Camp Gold Bar, is stopping at the Diller. 'I am logging along the Great Northern track near Gold Bar,' said he, 'and although the river is only a few rods from the track, I am making arrangements to have my logs hauled by train to salt water. The railroad company has a great many men working on the line up our way. They are raising the track about four feet on the Skykomish bottoms and are making a fine road of it... They are having lots of trouble with snowslides up near the switchback now, and I hear that some of the gangs have been caught up there for the last ten days with slides on both sides of them, but that they are working night and day to clear them away. Every day there are seven or eight men on the road each way, coming from and going to the scene of trouble. As the line is blockaded they have to walk and carry their blankets.'
“As the line is blockaded they have to walk and carry their blankets.”
The Great Northern's construction across the Cascades was a defining project for early Seattle, yet it was fraught with the same environmental volatility and labor challenges that continue to plague mountain transit infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest today.
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