Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.
---Isaiah 40:4
Way back at the end of February, before COVID-19 was much of a thing, and life was still sort of normal, Patty and I traveled east of the mountains for a weekend getaway. After an obligatory stop at the Thorp Fruit and Antique Mall at I-90 Exit 101, we sought out the Thorp Trailhead for a leg stretcher. The trailhead is an entry point into one of the most unique Washington State Parks. The Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail stretches 282 miles from Tekoa on the Idaho border to Cedar Falls east of Seattle. The trail itself is the railbed of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (better known as the "Milwaukee Road"). The western half of the trail is fully developed for recreational use by hikers, bicyclists, horse riders, skiers and snowshoers, with trailheads, gravel trail surface, campsites and interpretive information, while the eastern half is a more rugged experience still lacking the necessary upgrades for general usage. The critical link between the two halves, the Beverly Bridge spanning the Columbia River, is due to be opened in March 2021.
Thorp is located about 3/4 of the distance from Tekoa to Cedar Falls, in the high shrub-steppe of the Kittitas Valley, its reputation for windiness made clear by the plethora of wind turbine towers visible all around. An aspiring organic farmer just across the river from the trail (Spoon Full Farm) recently found out the hard way that raising free-range chickens here was not a viable plan as wind gusts frequently blew the fouls off their feet!
The Milwaukee Road was a latecomer to the railroading scene in the northwest, coming well after the Northern Pacific (1888) and Great Northern (1893) had already completed their lines with the assistance of massive land grants
(the NP was awarded nearly 40 million acres), incentives and corruption. Completing the line to Puget Sound in 1909, the Milwaukee Road quickly spurred farming, manufacturing and employment from Milwaukee all the way to Tacoma. The aerodynamically styled "Hiawatha" trains were a hit with passengers. It is maybe just a little ironic that this excess railroad development fell into bankruptcy and abandoned the tracks seventy years later, propelling the city of Milwaukee and other places along the route into desperate financial and social disintegration as their citizens struggled to adjust to a new economic paradigm with the loss of the railroad and the breweries, foundries, and auto plants that relied on its connectivity. It is at least a little heartening to see the route reborn as a path for muscle-powered transportation knitting communities together in a new and different way. Instead of shrinking the landscape by introducing faster, more insulated travel across long distances, this trail encourages slower, more invested travel that reveals how our communities fit together, and how the past connects to the present. In fact, along with other stretches of the abandoned Milwaukee Road and other rail trails, the Palouse to Cascades Trail is a jewel in the developing Great American Rail Trail stitched together from more than 145 individual rail trail segments, which will stretch 3,700 miles from Washington, DC to the Pacific Ocean when completed.
Hiking this trail differs from the usual hiking experience as the route has very even grades and gentle curves with many flat straight stretches. You can walk fast and it doesn't seem like the scenery changes much. All of it is necessary engineering that allowed the engines to haul tons of freight through terrain that has plenty of twists and folds and steep slopes. The most conspicuous engineering features of this route are the tunnels and trestles built to maintain a nearly straight and horizontal line even when the depth or width of a valley or the bulk of a mountain made other routes impossible.
The Snoqualmie Tunnel is the most famous feature of this linear park; about 80% of visitors to any part of the trail pass through the tunnel. Stretching 2.25 miles, and providing a straight line route more than 400 feet below the summit of Snoqualmie Pass, the tunnel was a marvel of engineering efficiency when it was built (blasting and removing rubble by hand from each end, they made a perfect match in the middle), and provides a unique hiking or biking experience in its new form. Entering the tunnel (with a headlamp, of course), one experiences a shock to the senses as you are engulfed by complete darkness and the temperature change (it hovers around 35 degrees year-round). Advancing, the pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel slowly enlarges until daylight is once again entered.
If you continue your walk or ride for another four miles to the west, you will cross over the Hansen Creek Trestle. Stretching 480 feet long and soaring 200 feet above Hansen Creek below, the curving ironwork passage allows views across the South Fork Snoqualmie Valley to the high peaks of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. To the west of Hansen Creek, more giant trestles are found at Mine Creek, Hall Creek and Change Creek, each shortening the route by spanning the gorges rather than contouring deep into the mountainsides.
The development of continent-spanning railroads in the late-19th and early-20th centuries cemented many tendencies of the growing American nation. Native people, residents of the land for centuries, were deprived of their land and livelihood. Government became a dominant force facilitating the colonization by taking title to the native lands, establishing a land tenure system with government land surveys and title records, subsidizing the construction of the railways with government route surveys and land grants...and ensuring the financial success of the railroads by encouraging a customer base -- farms created by land redistribution (homesteaders) and a timber products industry created by transferring forested lands wrested from native nations to corporate interests (the timber barons). Railroads were at the forefront of the imbalancing of corporate power and influence over public policy. With the vast wealth created by their success, they were capable of political coercion to maintain their influence, setting the stage for the outsized impact of fossil fuel corporations that has stymied climate solutions today.
The tunnels and trestles of the Milwaukee Road exalted the valleys and made the mountains low for the purpose of achieving Americas's "Manifest Destiny" of another era. Reconciliation of the grievous wrongs committed against native people, people of color, and to the very fabric of the planet in the name of that bygone national aspiration should be the rallying cry of our day.
To passively accept the stories of the West as I inherited them is to be complicit with the ongoing erasure of living cultures, languages, ways of knowing -- even bodies themselves. As I've learned all too well, such erasure is a violent and impassive act.
The West was indeed my inheritance, but it was ill-gotten through war, enslavement, forced labor, genocide and conquest. Every American must learn this, must find their own gateway to collective liberation, if we are to someday exist as part of a peaceful nation: Our inheritance is not great wealth, but a terrible debt.
--Alex Carr Johnson, Toward Unlearning Manifest Destiny, HCN, Sept 2020
As the year 2020 gives way to 2021, I believe that many of us yearn for a reset away from the insecurities of the COVID-19 pandemic (vaccines on the way!) and the incompetence, corruption, racism and walls placed in the path of progressive policies that the Trump administration represented (hello Joe Biden and Kamala Harris!). With perseverance and dedication, that reset can become a blossoming of reconciliation.
Bold climate policies must find a way to reduce our carbon footprint by half in the next decade while reaching toward justice for all people. Electricity generation must be free of fossil fuels. Dense affordable housing in our cities can be happen with the replacement of zoning policies that were defined to protect privilege for a few with a stretch for equity that will house and empower everyone in our communities. Major public investments in transit, not more highway lanes, will have the most significant impact in reducing the 45% of Washington's carbon emissions that come from transportation (yes, railroads, the high-speed kind!) while allowing better opportunities for economic health without dependence on car ownership. Progressive tax policies can ensure that the most important goals that benefit all of us can be funded equitably, with those that are most able to contribute paying their fair share.
Just as government turned the nation's work and wealth toward the construction of railroads to build a nation more than a century ago, government, the voice of all of us, can now direct the nation's richness toward reconciliation of the wrongs that were committed then. If we want our children and grandchildren to inherit a livable planet and live in a society with respect and justice, then we must do as much as we can, as quickly as we can.
--David
Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail is established on the lands of the Palouse, Wanapum, Wenatchi, Yakama and Snoqualmie Nations appropriated under duress by the treaties of 1855 between those nations and the US Government.
Hiawatha Train Crew photo courtesy of tacomahistory.live blog