Skykomish: The Railroad Town the Tunnel Hollowed Out
Near Stevens Pass Area, Washington
Skykomish was born because James J. Hill needed a division point on the Great Northern Railway where helper locomotives could be swapped before the climb over Stevens Pass. The town was platted in eighteen eighty-nine, incorporated in nineteen oh nine, and by the mid-nineteen twenties it was a busy railroad town.
Then the new Cascade Tunnel opened in nineteen twenty-nine, the longest railroad tunnel in the Western Hemisphere at the time, and the helper-engine work dried up almost overnight. By nineteen thirty the census counted five hundred and sixty-two residents. The town never really recovered.
Today Skykomish is a quiet Cascade gateway, its large old hotel and depot standing as evidence of the roaring railroad days when every westbound train needed a push.
