Worst Avalanche in United States History

The small town of Wellington was a stop on the Great Northern Railway high in the Cascade Mountains. Heavy snowfall had been recorded in the area and as much as 11 feet had fell on the worst day of the blizzard. Two trains were trapped in the rail depot, both bound for Seattle. One train was a mail train, the other carrying passengers, snow ploughs were sent out but they could not penetrate through the heavy accumulation of snow and the constant threat of avalanches kept the tracks closed.

Late into the final day of February the snow stopped and with an increase in the temperature from a warm wind the snowfall was replaced by rain. In the early morning darkness of the 1st of March a slab of snow measuring ten feet thick and covering a surface of a half a mile by a quarter dropped off the mountain towards the town. A forest fire earlier in the year had destroyed the trees protecting the town from such events, there was nothing to slow or stop the avalanche as it raced towards the town.

The avalanche when it hit missed the hotel which was full but hit the railway depot. Most of the train’s passengers and crew were sleeping, the impact of the mass of snow sent the trains a further 150 feet downhill into a river valley. 96 people were killed including three employees in the railway depot. Twenty three people were rescued alive from the train, they were rescued by people mostly from the hotel that just missed being swept away by the avalanche. The last bodies of those that died were not retrieved from the site until late July. Another avalanche three days later in British Columbia claimed the lives of 63 railroad workers, that incident remains the worst avalanche in Canada’s history.

The small town of Wellington was renamed Tye later in 1910, in the hope of losing any association with the unpleasant events of that March night. A second tunnel through the mountains opened in 1929 and the old town was abandoned, the old track and snow sheds built after the avalanche still remain and they are now a part of the Iron Goat Trail close to Stevens Pass.