This long colonnade is the concrete snowshed at Wellington, Washington. On March 1, 1910 Wellington, Washington was the site of the worst avalanche in American history. 2 trains, a fast mail and a passenger train, and the private cars of the Cascade Division superintendent of the Great Northern Railway with his valet and secretary aboard, were swept off the tracks by the avalanche and carried into the Tye river canyon below. The official toll was 96 lives lost. The Great Northern Railway moved the depot a few hundred feet east and renamed the depot as Tye in October 1910 to erase the memory of the the town of Wellington and the deadly avalanche. This snowshed was built in 1911 to cover the location of the avalanche and prevent a recurrence of the tragedy. The location is just west of the site of the town Wellington. This is now a hiking trail called the Iron Goat Trail. As you may be able to see from the photo, the Iron Goat Trail is wheelchair accessible for a distance of about 2 miles. The snowshed was built wide enough to accommodate two trains side by side. This is the inner or "uphill" track location. The "downhill" or outer track location is in the sunnier area to the right of the photo. This is where the two trains destroyed in the 1910 avalanche, which occurred before this snowshed was built, were located. The passenger train was in the "uphill" position in the center of the picture and the fast mail was in the "downhill" position to the right of the picture. The avalanche came from the slope of Windy Peak, which is uphill to the left.

Some claim that this snowshed and the Cascade tunnel, 1/4 mile to the east are haunted. On the day this photo was taken, Melissa Logstrom and I had an eerie experience at the east entrance of the Cascade Tunnel. Photo taken by Melissa Logstrom on August 17, 2008.