The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche

By Gary Krist

Book Overview

The never-before-told story of one of the worst rail disasters in U.S. history in which two trains full of people, trapped high in the Cascade Mountains, are hit by a devastating avalancheIn February 1910, a monstrous blizzard centered on Washington State hit the Northwest, breaking records. The world stopped--but nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny town called Wellington, perched high in the Cascade Mountains, where a desperate situation evolved minute by minute: two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found themselves marooned without escape, their railcars gradually being buried in the rising drifts. For days, an army of the Great Northern Railroad's most dedicated men--led by the line's legendarily courageous superintendent, James O'Neill--worked round-the-clock to rescue the trains. But the storm was unrelenting, and to the passenger's great anxiety, the railcars--their only shelter--were parked precariously on the edge of a steep ravine. As the days passed, food and coal supplies dwindled. Panic and rage set in as snow accumulated deeper and deeper on the cliffs overhanging the trains. Finally, just when escape seemed possible, the unthinkable occurred: the earth shifted and a colossal avalanche tumbled from the high pinnacles, sweeping the trains and their sleeping passengers over the steep slope and down the mountainside. Centered on the astonishing spectacle of our nation's deadliest avalanche, The White Cascade is the masterfully told story of a supremely dramatic and never-before-documented American tragedy. An adventure saga filled with colorful and engaging history, this is epic narrative storytelling at its finest.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805077057
• ISBN13: 9780805077056
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 315 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Great historical perspective of a forgotten catastrophe...

Don't know why I was prompted to pick this book up...my husband is in a search and rescue group, so that was partly the reason. I read the info given on the back of the book, and having grown up in Northern CA and being a voracious reader, I thought I should have heard about this one transportation disaster. My father was born up in Washington, but somehow this one has faded from national consciousness. What really struck me about this book is the straightforward writing of the author, Krist. He doesn't sensationalize, as some other books on disasters tend to do. He is honest and reflective, gives the reader all the information on both sides, and lets them draw their own conclusion. I especially enjoyed the information about the court trials and the aftermaths. We can dislike the typical corporate image that continues to run big companies (only now they are the pharmaceuticals who could care less...), but we also recognize that the men who dealt at the closest part of the railway with this disaster most probably did as good a job that could have been done. Unlike the Titanic, where there were some very dismaying behavior by many who were at the helm of the boat and the company, most of the rail workers, especially the superintendant who oversaw the whole week of work around this avalanche were hardworking and gallant, who did make a few mistakes but nothing overt. By showing us how the courts handled this particular case, plus the information that came from the newspapers that did sensationalize this happening, Krist lets us see why we have come full circle to another place that if this case were tried today, it would have ended very differently for the company. Krist makes a good case for why the ending verdict was probably right (but probably would not have been reached in this era of lawsuits we are currently in). However, he also points out the impact that this case and other transportation disasters of that time had on labor and safety laws in this country. He draws a good diagram for the reader for why this trainwreck led to our current safety requirements and the change in attitudes of people towards corporations that were in control during that time period. Now we need to turn our eyes to the corporations that are currently out of control in ours...perhaps Krist would like to take some of them on? Karen Sadler

History in the Novelist's Hand

Gary Krist does a superb job of placing the reader everywhere the historical characters go, mentally and physically. His writing style is readable but academic at the same time, neither pandering to base instinct or even ability, nor inundating the reader with words that need constant referral. He also makes the social, economic, and political issues of the day seem real and as pressing as any of today's problems. Finally, the technical detail Krist parlays is succinct and historically accurate without boring one to tears. All in all a very nice piece of work.

The Great Train Disaster

We hear of avalanches now and then, taking to their deaths skiers or climbers, but as disasters they are these days relatively small scale. That was not the case on the night of 1 March 1910, when bizarre weather in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State brought down an avalanche that was half a mile wide. In its path were two trains pinned in by the snowstorms, and the cars were hurled down a mountain. The official death count was 96, although the number is an estimate, and the toll on the wounded and on the rescuers cannot be tallied. Gary Krist, whose previous books have been fiction, has become a historian of this disaster, telling it with a novelist's skill in _The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche_ (Henry Holt). The disaster was not, as Krist modestly admits, the "Avalanche That Changed America", because it was in many ways just one aspect of changes that were happening in railroading at the time anyway. It remains, however, a gripping tale of human endeavor against natural forces; it is all historical fact, but Krist has produced a page-turner. Krist dutifully sets up the scenes in the mountains with historical context. In 1910, railroads made the American economy, and they had changed the American Northwest forever. The representative of the Great Northern Railway, the Superintendent of the Cascade Division was James H. O'Neill, in many ways the flawed hero of the book. He was a lifetime railroad man, "a precociously shrewd manager with seemingly inexhaustible reserves of drive and will." His were the responsibilities of the tracks, stations, buildings, and the movements of the trains through his region, a major mountain crossing that got an average of fifty feet of snow a year. The late February snow was bad enough to stop two trains, the Seattle Express and the Fast Mail, in transit between Spokane and Seattle. The passengers on the trains were at first merely annoyed by the delay. The passengers were kept fairly well in their cars; there was no lack of food, and though there was worry about having enough coal to move trains around, there was always sufficient coal to keep the cars warm. They socialized, and the porters and conductor circulated, trying to keep the passengers' spirits up, but cabin fever eventually set in. The tracks at the little trainyard town of Wellington had never been subject to avalanches as had others in the area, and indeed, avalanches at other parts of the tracks soon sealed the trains where they were. Early in the morning of 1 March, an avalanche came down the mountain, carrying all the cars with it, and smashing them to bits. The chapter on the avalanche itself is only sixteen pages, but it is followed by descriptions of the excruciating steps that O'Neill and his team took to rescue the few survivors, and then to recover bodies. The press, which had taken an exuberant and morbid interest in the case, printed absurdities like reports of