How Workers Built a 7.8-Mile Railroad Tunnel Through the Cascade Mountains

In March of 1910, 96 people died in the deadliest avalanche in American history. The railroad that put them there didn't shut down. It decided to go through the mountain instead. This is the story of the Great Northern Railway's Cascade Tunnel — 7.79 miles of bore driven through solid granite beneath the Cascade Range in Washington State, the longest railroad tunnel ever built in North America. To understand why it exists, you have to understand the Wellington disaster: two trains trapped on an exposed mountain shelf for nine days, 110 people waiting in the dark while the snow loaded the slopes above them, and what happened at 1:42 AM on March 1st when the mountain finally let go. The tunnel that followed was built by 4,000 workers living in snowbound mountain camps at elevations where the supply trains couldn't always reach them, drilling and blasting through faulted granite and groundwater flooding for four years straight, three shifts a day, seven days a week. Their names are not on any monument. What they built is still carrying freight trains through the Cascades today. The concrete is still there. The bore is still open. The tunnel has been in continuous service since January 12th, 1929. #ForgottenLabor #AmericanHistory #RailroadHistory If this is the kind of history that should be remembered, subscribe and leave a comment below telling us which forgotten project we should cover next. Like if you made it to the end — it helps more than you know. #ForgottenLabor #AmericanHistory #RailroadHistory #CascadeTunnel #GreatNorthernRailway #WellingtonAvalanche #LaborHistory #InfrastructureHistory #AmericanEngineering #StevensPass #PacificNorthwestHistory #WorkersHistory #RailroadEngineering #DocumentaryHistory #ForgottenHistory