Snoqualmie Pass: The Cascade Gateway

At just over three thousand feet, Snoqualmie Pass is the lowest of Washington's year-round Cascade crossings, which is precisely why every major transportation route in Pacific Northwest history has used it. The Snoqualmie people traveled this route for trade and winter hunting long before contact. In eighteen sixty-five, Seattle citizens explored the pass as a wagon road route, and a toll road followed by eighteen sixty-seven.

The Sunset Highway crossed here in nineteen fifteen, and when Interstate Ninety was built across it, it became the main artery linking Seattle to eastern Washington and the rest of the continent. The pass also hosts a ski area that traces back to the early nineteen thirties, putting downhill skiing within an hour of Seattle for close to a century.