Archives Spotlight: The Stevens Pass Railway Disaster

April 12, 2019 Secretary of State's Office

Researchers at the State Archives recently came across these photos of the aftermath from the Wellington avalanche, a disaster that struck the Cascade Mountains near Stevens Pass in 1910. The top photo, taken eight months after the tragedy and viewable in full here, shows the devastation on the mountainsides and reconstruction progress on some of the town’s structures. Click to view a larger version of the picture to see a train in motion in the lower right corner. The bottom…

Archives spotlight: Notorious Spokane criminal shot dead in 1918 at state penitentiary

March 1, 2019 Secretary of State's Office

Gunshots rang through downtown Spokane in a firefight between Fred “Tiger” Johnson and the police as Johnson attempted to flee across Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railway yards. After he robbed a streetcar, he attempted to avoid arrest but was outgunned by law enforcement. Tiger was shot twice, then booked by the Sheriff’s Office on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, highway robbery, and first-degree assault. This punched Tiger’s (sometimes known as Louis Coynt) ticket to the Walla Walla…

Archives treasure #3: Railroad maps, 1880s-1980s

December 24, 2012 Secretary of State's Office

There was a time, before highways were so commonplace, when railroads dominated U.S. transportation. In fact, the American rail network in the 1910s was more than 250,000 miles of track, far more than the roughly 140,000 miles existing today nationwide. The third and final Archives treasure for December reflects that golden era of railroads in Washington and the rest of the U.S. It’s a collection of more than 4,000 railroad maps held by the State Archives. The statewide map above…

From Our Corner

Washington Secretary of State Blog

Browsed by
Tag: Great Northern Railway