One pleasant surprise for a novelist writing his first nonfiction book is the sheer sociability of the process. Instead of sitting at home in front of a blank screen, I was regularly out in the world, interacting with historians, archivists, librarians, descendants of participants in the Wellington drama, and experts of all types. Some of these people eventually became my friends, but all came to share a greater or lesser interest in the book to be written. The project of historical nonfiction, I found, generates an extraordinary spirit of community and common purpose. It also creates an enormous debt of gratitude.
The White Cascade is first and foremost a railroad story, so I owe much to the various train experts who helped lead me through the mysteries of this fascinating and complex world. For enduring my constant questions and requests for information over the course of several years, railroad historian David Sprau deserves special mention. A former telegrapher, train dispatcher, assistant chief dispatcher, and short-line superintendent, Dave has an encyclopedic knowledge of Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroad operations that proved an invaluable resource for me throughout the writing of this book.
T. Michael Power, whose thirty-four-year railroad career began with train service in Spokane and took him through management positions in the Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s marketing and operations departments, was likewise a key source of guidance and information. Other experts who contributed to the book were Dr. George Fischer (who with his wife, Joan, offered me a warm welcome and a thorough GN tour of Minneapolis-St. Paul) and Father Dale Peterka (whose photography and expertise in all things GN is well known nationwide). I’m also indebted to Stu Holmquist and various other members of the Great Northern Railway Historical Society; avalanche experts Jill Fredston, codirector of the Alaska Mountain Safety Center, and Charley Shiman-ski, education director of the Mountain Rescue Association; Ruth Ittner, the moving force behind the Iron Goat Trail, which now traces the old GN line through Stevens Pass; and Herb Schneider, who braved the elements on a chill, snowy day in December to lead a stranger from the East along the passable sections of the trail.
I found plenty of willing assistance in libraries and archives as well. In St. Paul, Dr. W. Thomas White and Elaine McCormick of the James J. Hill Reference Library were particularly helpful. I’m also obliged to the staff of the Minnesota Historical Society, where the Great Northern’s corporate records are held. Mark Behler, curator of the Wenatchee Valley Museum in Wenatchee, and Cheryl Gunselman, manuscripts librarian at the Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections division of the Washington State University Libraries in Pullman, were important Washington connections. Thanks also to Nicolette Bromberg, visual materials curator at the Special Collections of the University of Washington Libraries in Seattle, Elaine Miller of the Washington State Historical Society Research Center in Tacoma, Carolyn Marr of the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, the staff of the Spokane Public Library, Steve Hubbard of the Fargo Public Library, and Leah Byzewski, director of the Grand Forks Historical Society. A special nod must go to Margaret Riddle and David Dilgard of the Northwest Room at the Everett Public Library, for assistance above and beyond the call of normal research-assistance duty. And, of course, my friend Alan Stein, staff historian of the trailblazing Web site HistoryLink.org, deserves thanks from me and everyone in the Wellington community for his online Wellington Scrapbook of newspaper articles (www.historylink.org/Wellington/info.htm), as well as many other interesting insights into the history of the Pacific Northwest.
Those more personally connected to the story of Wellington were also extremely helpful. Jeanne Patricia (“Pat”) May is the granddaughter of James H. and Berenice O’Neill; she and her husband, Ron, kindly opened their house to me on several occasions so that I could pore over Pat’s collection of family photos, clippings, letters, and telegrams. (Thanks, too, to genealogist Sarah Little for finding the Mays in the first place.) I owe similar gratitude to Dolores Hensel Yates, the daughter of Wellington survivor A. B. Hensel; she and her husband, Keith, have both written about A.B.’s Wellington experience and were generous in sharing the fruits of their research with me. Among other Wellington descendants who offered their knowledge, documents, and photos were John Topping (grandson of Ned), Craig Hanson (great-grandnephew of Joe Pettit), Barney Moore (son of Bill J. Moore and a former switchman and trainmaster himself), and John Deely (great-grandson of GN traffic manager M. J. Costello). I would also like to thank Danielle Devine and Vince Decker, current residents of the O’Neill home in Everett, for inviting an unkempt loiterer into their house and sharing with him their own research about its history. A special note of thanks goes out to the amazing Ruby El Hult, who, though in her nineties, agreed to meet with me in 2004; Ruby’s pioneering work in the study of the Wellington avalanche has been instrumental in keeping the story alive into a second century.
Many other friends and associates provided guidance along the way, but I’d like to make specific mention of my friends historian Michael Kazin, novelist Lisa Zeidner, law professor Bruce Morton, and all-around polymath and historical visionary Robert Wright (the last of whom has suffered through drafts of every book I have ever written). I’d also like to thank my editors at Holt, Jennifer Barth and George Hodgman, for pushing me to include all of the important things I somehow left out of my first draft and to omit all of the less important things I had left in. A special thanks goes to my agent and friend Eric Simonoff at Janklow & Nesbit, who had the insight at a lunch in Manhattan one day to ask me the question, “Have you ever thought about nonfiction?” I had, but somehow I needed Eric to propel me down this new path. I’ll always be grateful to him.
And, of course, while it’s vaguely insufferable when writers thank their families for putting up with them during the long, tedious process of book creation, I will risk insufferability by doing just that: To my wife, Elizabeth Cheng; my daughter, Anna; and my sweet hound, Lily, go my endless love and gratitude.
Finally, there are two people in particular without whom the writing of this book would have been all but unthinkable: Martin Burwash, railroad photographer and author of Cascade Division, The Great Adventure, and a still-unfinished novel about the events at Wellington, took me under his wing early in this process and has been an inexhaustible source of railroad knowledge (not to mention good-natured banter and at times almost daily e-mail companionship) ever since. No one on the planet knows more about the hour-by-hour details of what occurred at Stevens Pass in the late winter of 1910, and he has been extraordinarily forthcoming with all of it. I am happy to count Martin and his wife, Janice, librarian extraordinaire, among my friends.
But the presiding spirit over this entire project has been Robert Kelly. Widely recognized as the premier world expert on the Wellington Disaster, Bob has a passion for the subject that proves infectious to all who experience it. He has been absolutely unstinting in his generosity, providing me with encouragement, information, personal connections, books, photographs, and copies of rare documents from his own exhaustive collection of Wellingtoniana. Bob and his wife, Pam, have become my family-away-from-family in Seattle, and their companionship, conversation, and moral support have been critical to this project in more ways than I can report. My debt to Bob is, quite simply, incalculable.