Now And Then
By Paul Dorpat
A Snow Pass For All
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 COURTESY OF JOHN COOPER THEN: The snow shed on I-90 along Lake Keechelus east of Snoqualmie Pass was originally made of timbers.
COURTESY OF JEAN SHERRARD NOW: Now travelers enter the dark chamber through a concrete arch. |
A QUICK SCIENTIFIC survey of a dozen Wallingford neighbors doing yard work (it was a warm weekend afternoon) suggests that every Seattle citizen has gone through Snoqualmie Pass in the last half century. Most of them remember the snow shed shown in the "now" view. This concrete chute protects the westbound lane beside Lake Keechelus, and "1950" is stamped into the concrete above the entrance.
But how many will remember its predecessor, the wooden shed in the older view? I raise my hand — I think. In the late 1940s, when the Dorpats first visited Seattle from Spokane, I remember being fascinated by the implications of this contraption — that snow could suddenly engulf us. Or did I?
The alternative explanation for my vivid memory is a photographer from Arlington named J. Boyd Ellis.
Beginning in the 1920s this high-school-principal-turned-postcard-photographer traveled the state (often through Snoqualmie Pass) taking thousands of pictures of landmarks, scenery and main streets. John Cooper, the Ellis collector who loaned me his copy of the older snow shed, has more than 5,000 Ellis images, and he is looking for more. While Ellis signed and numbered his postcards the numbers are of practically no help because he could use the same one many times.
According to Randy Giles, the project engineer for the state's big plans for this section of Interstate 90, the wooden snow shed was built in 1931. This figures, because 1931 was the first year the pass was opened for year-round traffic. (In 1931 the pass highway was only 16 years old, although somehow the first automobile made it through in 1905.)
Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.
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