Ninety-six people were killed when an avalanche tore down a mountainside near Stevens Pass and buried two snowbound trains.
It remains the deadliest avalanche in U.S. history.
On this day 107 years ago, a slab of dense snow cascaded down a hillside near Wellington, just west of Stevens Pass, and knocked two trains off the tracks, threw them down a ravine and buried several coaches.
“It was four o’clock yesterday morning when the white horror with a front half a mile wide and many feet deep roared and plunged down the mountain side upon the doomed trains,” The Seattle Times reported on March 2, 1910.
Ninety-six people died in the slide. Seven years ago, on the 100th anniversary of the Wellington Avalanche, Seattle Times reporter Lynda Mapes recounted the harrowing tale.