Queen Anne’s Connection to the Wellington Train Disaster

Mount Pleasant Cemetery in north Queen Anne is full of Seattle history. Headstones mark the final resting places of some of Seattle and Queen Anne’s most prominent families - many of whose names now mark the streets on which we live. Blaine, Lee, McGraw, and Comstock are but a few.

But you’ll also find the markers for 18 souls whose lives were lost in a tragic train accident at Stevens Pass.

In late February 1910, the Cascade Mountains were hit with blizzards that buried the surrounding landscape in 5+ feet of snow. The constant barrage of inclement weather meant the railroad tracks along the Great Northern Railroad were almost impossible to keep clear. (If you’ve ever tried to drive the pass during today’s winters, you know how difficult it is to keep up with the snow!)

After a nine-day blizzard, two Great Northern Railway trains - the Spokane Local passenger train No. 25, and the Fast Mail train No. 27 - were delayed in the mountains near the town of Wellington, a small railroad community located at the western portal of the Great Northern’s original Cascade Tunnel. The snow on the rails was too much for the plows and railway workers to manage, so the trains were forced to sit in the shadow of Windy Peak to wait out the storm and for the tracks to be cleared.

Meanwhile, the weather began to shift - but not in a good way. A weather system known as a pineapple express moved in, bringing with it warmth and moisture that changed the snow to rain. On February 28, the rapid change in temperature created a thunderstorm that enveloped the Cascades, including Wellington.

As the storm raged, a lightning strike and subsequent thunder shook the snow on Windy Peak loose. The slopes of Windy Peak were already in prime condition for an avalanche: years of clearcutting and forest fires had opened up the slopes above the railroad tracks, making a slide inevitable. When the storm shook the snow loose, it created an avalanche half a mile long, a quarter-mile wide, and 14 feet thick, that headed straight for the unsuspecting train passengers below. 

The force of the avalanche was so strong, it pushed the rail cars some 150 feet below the tracks. 96 people died, including 35 passengers and 61 Great Northern Railroad employees. A list of those that died was later circulated in regional newspapers.

Wreckage of the Wellington train disaster, credits unknown, 1910.

Rescue efforts started almost immediately, but it was slow going at first given the force of the slide, how the snow had come down, and the rough terrain surrounding the accident. The last victim of the disaster wasn’t recovered from the mountainside until July 1910. Great Northern Railroad spent three weeks repairing the damaged tracks and even built a rough snowshed to protect trains as they traveled through the area. But another avalanche in January 1916 proved the area was too dangerous, and Great Northern decided to relocate the rail grade, abandoning Wellington. 

The Wellington disaster is considered one of the worst train disasters in U.S. history, and the worst natural disaster in Washington state in terms of lives lost, according to HistoryLink. The Great Northern Railroad was not held liable for the accident, as it was deemed an “act of God.” 

You can visit the remains of the Wellington site today, if you visit the Iron Goat Trail that follows the old railroad grade. You’ll see the dilapidated remains of the old snowshed, train debris scattered throughout the forest, and can even peer into the old Cascade Tunnel. 

But what does this have to do with a cemetery in Queen Anne? Today, the headstones of 18 Wellington victims can be found in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, including six railroad employees who were never identified. You can find these headstones using FindAGrave; a user-generated list of headstones for the victims covers not only Washington cemeteries, but California as well.

Wellington Avalanche casualty headstones at Mount Pleasant Cemetery

Photos by QAHS, August 2024

You can also find the monument to the S.S. Valencia shipwreck, which wrecked off Beale Point, Vancouver Island on its way from San Francisco to Seattle 

Sources:

●     Lange, G. (2023, January 26). Train disaster at Wellington Kills 96 on March 1, 1910. HistoryLink.

●     Library of Congress. (n.d.). Research guides: Wellington, Washington Train Disaster: Topics in Chronicling America - Research Guides at Library of Congress.

●     steedjb. (2017, November 30). A Seattle Graveyard, full of Tragic tales. Atlas Obscura.

●     "Here Comes the Avalanche Express!" Mossback's Northwest, season 9, episode 1. Cascade PBS. April 4, 2024.