HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD Wttsrf EAST SIDE HIGHWAY (Washington Highway 123) ~7- Mount Rainier National Park HAER No. WA-124 7- I. INTRODUCTION Location: Between Ohanapecosh Entrance and Cayuse Pass Mount Rainier National Park, Lewis and Pierce counties, Washington. Quads: Ohanapecosh Hot Springs, Wash. Chinook Pass, Wash. UTMs: South End, 1 mi. s. of Ohanapecosh Ranger Station 10/608800/5174680 North End, Cayuse Pass 10/611350/5191225 Date of Construction: 1931-1940 Designer: Bureau of Public Roads Owner: Mount Rainier National Park, National Park Service Use: Park highway Significance: Connecting with the Mather Memorial Parkway at Cayuse Pass, the East Side Highway provides access to the park from southeastern Washington state and serves as an intra-state transportation artery. Project Information: Documentation of the East Side Highway is part of the Mount Rainier National Park Roads and Bridges Recording Project, conducted in summer 1992 by the Historic American Engineering Record. Richard H. Quin, Historian, 1992 EAST SIDE HIGHWAY HAER No. WA-124 (page 2) II. HISTORY This is one in a series of reports prepared for the Mount Rainier National Park Roads and Bridges Recording Project. HAER No. WA-35, MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK ROADS AND BRIDGES, contains an overview history of the park roads. East Side Highway The East Side Highway (Washington Highway 123) provides vehicular access to the southeastern corner of Mount Rainier National Park and serves as a connecting link between Washington Highway 12 (White Pass Highway), Washington Highway 410 (Mather Memorial Parkway), and Washington Highway 706 (via the Nisqually Road and Stevens Canyon Highway). The road evinces the National Park Service's attention to landscape qualities through its use of rustic stone retaining walls, stone-faced bridges, sweeping curves, scenic vistas, and a tunnel with native stone portals. Designed not only as a park road but a state highway, the East Side Highway offers motorists a scenic drive through old-growth forest and the Ohanapecosh River valley. The first consideration for a road through this area dates to 1907, when Major Hiram Chittenden of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed an •around-the• mountain• road system for Mount Rainier National Park. The first segment of this ambitious planned system was the "Government Road,• constructed between the Nisqually Entrance and Paradise Valley between 1904 and 1915. In the late 1920s, construction began on the West Side Road from near the Nisqually Entrance to the Carbon River country. This road, however, was never extended beyond the North Fork of the Puyallup River, because the National Park Service decided to preserve the most north and northwest areas of the park in a wilderness state with access limited to foot and pack trails. Today, the Carbon River and Mowich Lake areas in the northwest corner are reached by dead-end roads, but these form no part of a parkwide circuit road system. The State of Washington constructed the "Naches Pass Highway• through the park's present northeast section between 1926 and 1931. Later renamed the "Mather Memorial Parkway• and designated as Washington Highway 410, this road enters the present park boundary near the Silver Springs area, heads generally south to Cayuse Pass, then swings east over Chinook Pass and on to Yakima. This road provided the first easy access to the park from eastern Washington. The White River Road to Yakima Park leaves this road 3 miles north of Cayuse Pass and provides access to a popular region of high mountain meadows and the Sunrise development. A rough private road was constructed to the Ohanapecosh Hot Springs resort (no longer extant) in early 1924. The single-lane track, built by the developers of the thermal springs, was described as a •good road• in the 24 September issue of the Chehalis (Washington) Bee Nugget. 1 The new route was intended to connect at Lewis (now Packwood) Washington with a new highway being built by the state and the U.S. Forest Service. The new State Route S, or •cowlitz• Naches Road,• would link with the Pacific Coast Highway south of Chehalis and then run east and northeast through Randle and Lewis. Much of this section was a reconstruction of existing roadway. It then would follow the Ohanapecosh River drainage north through Forest Service land to link with the Naches Pass Highway (at this point called the •McClellan Pass Highway•) at cayuse Pass. Although the Ohanapecosh springs lay a quarter mile outside the park, Mount Rainier Superintendent Owen A. Tomlinson complained that thousands of new visitors would be visiting a corner once seen only by a few hundred, and that the park had no facilities whatsoever for their accommodation. 2 The EAST SIDE HIGHWAY HAER No. WA-124 (page 3) state and Forest Service road was completed in rough form to the Clear Fork of the Cowlitz River, 5 miles northeast of Lewis, in July 1924. 3 The state surveyed the 5 miles between Clear Fork and what was then the park boundary near Ohanapecosh late in 1925. That winter, work began on reconstructing and surfacing the state approach road as far as Lewis. The reconditioned road was built to an 18' wide standard and surfaced with crushed gravel as far as Lewis by 1927. 4 The Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) began reconstruction of 6 miles of road across Forest Service land between Lewis and the Clear Fork of the Cowlitz River in 1928. The BPR, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was responsible for road-building projects in the national forests and in 1925 also assumed responsibility for major road projects in the national parks. The Bureau hoped to complete the project in time for the 1929 tourist season. 5 The remaining section of road to Ohanapecosh Hot Springs remained a primitive track passable only in the summer. In 1931, the park boundaries were expanded to include a large area along this road as far east as the Cascade crest, and also the Ohanapecosh area in the southeast. The •McClellan Pass Highway• was completed through the northeast section of the park the following year and was renamed the •Mather Memorial Highway.• [For a complete report on this road, see HAER No. WA-35g.] The State of Washington and the National Park Service had by this point determined to extend the road from Ohanapecosh north to meet the new road at Cayuse Pass. The Bureau of Public Roads established a survey camp in the southeast corner of the park and began running its location surveys in June 1931. The survey party, under the direction of BPR Senior Engineer Inspector Foreman E. D. Kinney, was to locate a line to meet with the new Naches Pass Highway somewhere in the vicinity of Tipsoo Lake or Cayuse Pass, and was to investigate several potential crossings of the Cowlitz Divide. 6 Construction of the 13.8-mile new road (called the •East Side Highway• on construction documents but •East Side Road• in many Park Service records) was contracted by the State of Washington to several private firms under supervision of the Bureau of Public Roads. The Mount Rainier National Park Superintendent and staff of the National Park Service Landscape Engineering Division worked closely with the BPR to insure that the park landscape was protected and that scenic features would be properly showcased. Bids for the clearing of the first 5.2 miles of road were opened at the Portland, Oregon office of the BPR on 10 November 1931. The Grays Harbor Construction Company submitted the astonishingly low bid of only $9,850 for the project. This was far below the engineers' estimate of $32,000, and fears were expressed that the contractor would work at a great loss, leading to delays, unsatisfactory work, and other difficulties. The bidder was invited to the office to discuss the work, but the company insisted it could do the work at the price submitted. Accordingly, the contract was issued. 7 Construction began soon afterwards. As had been expected, progress proved very slow, and bad weather forced a shutdown of work on 19 January 1932 with little having been accomplished. The BPR District Engineer ordered the contractor to resume work in April, but soon reported that work was falling farther behind schedule, and, without a change of attitude on the part of the contractor, would be greatly delayed. Less than thirty men were at work where there should have been at least seventy-five. A subcontractor, on finding out there might be money problems, refused to do any further work. More delays EAST SIDE HIGHWAY HAER No. WA-124 (page 4) resulted when, on 27 May, the contractor was ordered to temporarily shut down operations on account of extreme fire hazard conditions then prevailing in the park. Despite the early delays, the company was able to make up much of the time and completed its grading work on 26 November. 8 On 1 February 1932, a contract was let to Myers and Coulter of Seattle for the clearing, draining, grading and surfacing of 2.7 miles of road connecting the road with the state approach road. Myers and Coulter had just constructed the last link of the West Side Highway, and park and BPR officials were confident the firm could complete this work by the end of the 1932 construction season. By May, the firm had completed all clearing and burning work and was considerably ahead of schedule. 9 A contract for clearing and grubbing the northern 4.57 mile section between Deer Creek and Cayuse Pass was not awarded in the initial round because the low bidders were known for trouble and delays on earlier projects.