VIDEO: TUMWATER DAM AND JOLANDA LAKE. Click on the photo and allow it to buffer a bit
We are at an elevation of 1,483 feet. 32 miles up Hwy 2 is the summit of Stevens Pass, at 4,062 feet. Today, Hwy 2 gives a beautiful and reasonably leisurely path over the Cascades toward Seattle. But, turn your time machine back to 1893 and you will find the highway replaced by a railroad, and up-line a few miles you will find some of the scariest rail switchbacks ever to grace a mountainside. Yes, SWITCHBACKS! The rail ascended in a series of sections, each section intersecting the next length at a switch. The train would proceed forward past the first switch along a dead-end nub of track and would then have to stop. Once the switch had been re-set, the train would have to REVERSE back over the switch which had been set to divert the train up the next section, to the next switch and nub. Once stopped at nub #2, the train would proceed forward again up the next section, and so on to the summit, where it would have to proceed down the other side in an equally hair-raising fashion. There were 8 such zig-zags, but I have not been able to find whether that means 4 on each side of the summit, or if one side had more than did the other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zig_zag_(railway)
Now, fast forward to 1900, and the Great Northern Railway (GNR) has just completed a 2 1/2 -mile-long tunnel to render the switchbacks unnecessary. However, they didn't consider what it would be like to pass nearly 3 miles in an enclosure just behind a coal-smoke-belching railroad engine. People commonly became sick as they passed through the tunnel, and a few nearly died.
GNR's solution was to purchase electric engines to pull trains through the tunnel. For that to work, they needed electricity. So, from 1907 to 1909 the GNR built Tumwater Canyon Dam and laid an 8 1/2 foot diameter penstock (pipeline) from here to about a mile downriver, where they built a power plant. At that time, this was the largest hydroelectric project west of Niagra Falls.
The penstock, originally made of wooden staves wrapped in a continuous length of heavy steel wire, has basically rotted away, but the dam remains, providing one of the more relaxing and fascinating places to stop and stretch your legs as you drive up or down Hwy 2.
http://www.gngoat.org/tumwater_dam.htm
http://www.gngoat.org/tumwater_canyon.htm
