Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.
By Angeline Nesbit
The Snoqualmie Pass road project was first conceptualized in the 1840s, but construction of the road stopped and started with the political and economic concerns of the region and country. The road didn’t reach a point where it resembled a real highway until about 1895. Constructed with Cedar planks to help keep the road even and drivable, cars began to travel the route although often having to adapt to weather changes quickly.
Automobiles are just the most recent form of travel through the Cascades though. Native Americans walked across the mountains for thousands of years before a large road was cut out. Using a slightly different route than Snoqualmie Pass follows today, indigenous peoples were able to maintain trade routes between east and west. With the introduction of the horse these routes were even more readily traveled. Today one mile of the original route, which also laid groundwork for European colonizer’s eventual road, is preserved near Denny’s creek.
Early European and American settlers came in wagons and on horseback as well across the route, but they remained partial to travel by water until the road began to be more established in the late 1800s. Still freight wagons bringing goods out west used the road readily. In 1909 the Alaska-Yukon Exposition created a reason to improve the road as people flocked to attend the event.
Photo (above): Men with car on Snoqualmie Pass highway, probably near North Bend, taken in 1916.
This along with automobiles and tourists are sometimes credited with the final push to create a truly viable pass at Snoqualmie. US route 10, Sunset highway opened in 1915, a greatly improved road to allow easy travel for motorists. Still, the road was often perilous, and motorists were sometimes inclined to park their cars on railway flatbeds and take the train through the pass in inclement weather.
The Milwaukee Road was one of these railways. Building railroads and tunnels through the pass they transported goods, people, and other items. Milwaukee Road used some of the first electrified trains which traveled westward through their own protected tunnels to speed travel. Their train, The Olympian, was the first passenger train to go through the Snoqualmie tunnel in January 1915.
Dramatic changes in transportation are a part of what has shaped the Eastside. Without roads like the Snoqualmie Pass highway (known as I-90) our region of eastern King County would find travel to the east extremely difficult. Developing the road to allow for the safe travel of cars and trucks made the large community we live in today possible.
Resources
Eastside Heritage Center Archives
