The first people to cross the Cascade Range at Stevens Pass were prehistoric ancestors of today’s American Indians, who followed animal trails and natural passageways that became trail networks for food gathering, trade, and visits between communities on both sides of the mountains. Although the exact trail has never been found, archaeological evidence indicates that these prehistoric travelers were the first to break through at Stevens Pass. The first road across the pass was built by the Great Northern Railway in the early 1890s to haul construction equipment and supplies, and this Tote Road was rough, narrow, often ungraded, and partly made of split logs across swampy ground. As settlement grew in the upper Nason Creek and Skykomish valleys, wagon use increased, and by 1893 the Tote Road had become an established track through the forest. In 1890 Great Northern surveyor John F. Stevens identified the gap in the Cascades that now bears his name, and three years later the first railroad crossed the pass by steep switchbacks. Because of avalanches, the railway built miles of snowsheds and in 1900 completed the 2.6-mile Cascade Tunnel through the mountains. Even then the route remained dangerous, with avalanches, derailments, snow, and landslides causing repeated trouble, so in 1929 the Great Northern built a 7.8-mile tunnel beneath Stevens Pass, abandoned the earlier tunnel and switchbacks, and relocated the line to its present route. An automobile road over the pass was first proposed in 1911 as the Cascade Scenic Highway, built jointly by King, Snohomish, and Chelan counties and the Forest Service. Opened in July 1925, it followed parts of the old Tote Road and abandoned railway switchbacks as a one-lane road averaging 14 feet wide with turnouts for passing. After later realignments, the Stevens Pass Highway was completed by the Washington State Department of Transportation and remains one of Washington’s most scenic thoroughfares.