- Wellington, Washington
Wellington, later known as Tye, was a small unincorporated
railroad community on the Great Northern Railway in northeasternKing County, Washington . Founded in 1893, it was located at the west portal of the originalCascade Tunnel underStevens Pass . It is infamous for being the site of theMarch 1 ,1910 ,Wellington avalanche , the worstavalanche inUnited States history, in which 96 people died. (The number of deaths is a matter of dispute. Newspapers of the time reported 118 deaths in blazing headlines. It is said that the railroad itself persuaded officials to lower the death count in an attempt to reduce the significance of the event. While this seems unlikely, so does renaming the town, which they did do.)After the disaster, the town's name was changed to Tye, after the nearby
Tye River , because of the negative connotation of the original name.Tye was abandoned in 1929 when the second
Cascade Tunnel came into use.This ghost town went on to have an elementary school built and named after it. Wellington Elementary is an elementary school in the
Northshore School District .Geography
Wellington was located at coor dms|47|44|58|N|121|07|10|W|.GR|1
References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.