North Cascades & Lake Chelan

Talk of a road across the North Cascades began before statehood, and the road did not open until September 2, 1972: the North Cascades Highway, State Route 20, over Rainy and Washington passes. At Washington Pass, 5,477 feet, the hairpin below Liberty Bell is where the dark forest of the west side gives way to the dry east, and snow closes the high section most years from November into spring. West of the passes Seattle City Light's dams back the Skagit up into Diablo and Ross lakes; east, the road drops into the Methow Valley and Winthrop.

Lake Chelan runs some fifty miles up a glacial trough into the mountains and reaches 1,486 feet deep, the third-deepest lake in the country after Crater Lake and Tahoe. At its head is Stehekin, which has no road in. People arrive on the passenger boat from Chelan, by floatplane, or on foot over the passes.

The Wenatchi, the P'squosa, fished for salmon where Icicle Creek meets the Wenatchee River. The treaty signed at Walla Walla in 1855 promised them a reservation of thirty-six square miles around that fishery. It was never set aside, and by 1903 the government had moved the last Wenatchi families to the Colville Reservation, where they are one of the twelve bands of the Confederated Tribes. The fishery is a federal fish hatchery now. Just downstream, Leavenworth lost its railroad yards and its sawmill in the 1920s and in the 1960s rebuilt its downtown as a Bavarian village, though no Bavarians had ever settled it. Wenatchee, where the river meets the Columbia, grows apples on the irrigated benches above both.

What to See in North Cascades & Lake Chelan

3 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Historic Sites

Buckner Homestead

Stehekin

A pioneer apple orchard in a valley with no road in, still watered by the ditch the family dug from Rainbow Creek more than a century ago.

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Industry & Mining

Ladder Creek Falls and Gardens

Newhalem

A waterfall behind a powerhouse that Seattle's light superintendent strung with colored lights and planted as an exotic garden, to sell the city on its dams.

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Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery

Leavenworth

The world's largest salmon hatchery when it opened in 1940, built to make up for the runs Grand Coulee Dam cut off, on the fishery the Wenatchi were promised.

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Scenic Drives through North Cascades & Lake Chelan

Stories from North Cascades & Lake Chelan

North Cascades & Lake Chelan rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.