Advanced search

Now & Then Paul Dorpat

Built For The Boom

Built in 1905, this great box of a hotel served Skykomish when it was a vigorous railroad town. The hotel patronized railroad men with the comforts and vices generally expected of company boomtowns all along the Great Northern's transcontinental line. The four stories and wide verandas were impressive witnesses to both the hotel's and the town's ambitions.

The only structure in town with a bigger footprint was the railroad's roundhouse. Skykomish was the western terminus for the electric operations through Stevens Pass. It was here that nonpolluting electric locomotives replaced steam and, later, diesel engines for the west-bound trip through the Cascade Tunnel. When ventilation was installed in the tunnel in 1956, the electric locos were no longer needed, and both the roundhouse and the box hotel went quiet, if not mute.

Once upon a time, eight passenger trains a day stopped at Skykomish. Now Amtrak's daily east- and west-bound Empire Builders hardly slow down when passing through town. The 1925 opening of a highway over Stevens Pass contributed motorized traffic to the town's Railroad Avenue, but these visits were made less convenient in the 1930s when the Stevens Pass Highway was rerouted to the north side of the Skykomish River. The town responded with a bridge it completed in 1939.

Although using a 10-foot pole to gain height for his "now" shot, Jean Sherrard still could not quite reach the altitude of Lee Picket's circa 1913 historical view. This imposing roadhouse-hotel has always been a popular subject, and the snapshots and published photographs of it could paper its walls. Three examples, including these, are in our new book, "Washington Then and Now."

"Washington Then and Now" can be purchased through www.washingtonthenandnow.com ($45) or through Tartu Publications at P.O. Box 85208, Seattle, WA 98145.

Buy a link