South Cle Elum Yard: The Milwaukee Road's Last Roundhouse
Washington
When the Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad built its Pacific Extension in nineteen oh nine, it needed a division point where locomotives could be serviced and train crews could switch. South Cle Elum, just across the Yakima River from the older coal town, was chosen. A depot, roundhouse, icehouse, bunkhouses, and a company restaurant rose almost overnight.
The town incorporated in nineteen eleven. For decades the yard was the heartbeat of the Milwaukee Road's mountain operations through the Cascades. When the railroad abandoned the route in nineteen eighty, the town went quiet. The restored buildings that remain are now the most complete collection of original Milwaukee Road structures surviving anywhere on the Pacific Extension. They are a National Register Historic District, and the surrounding corridor has become Iron Horse State Park, popular with cyclists tracing the old rail grade through the mountains.
