Traveling Smart -- Close To Home -- Blewett Pass Highway: Sidetrip Into A Slower Era

In several recent trips to central and eastern Washington, I've headed off the highways to explore some backroads.

I wasn't looking for macho four-wheel-drive routes. Just a sidetrip away from the highway for an hour or two, something easy to drive in a passenger car.

Some of the most pleasant detours I found near Seattle were off U.S. Highway 97, about a two-hour drive from the city.

Highway 97 climbs across the Cascades between Interstate 90 (near Cle Elum) and Highway 2 (near Leavenworth). It's easy to drive this two-lane stretch, also known as the Blewett Pass Highway, in about 45 minutes even though it it goes through a 4,102-foot pass.

But why rush? Take the time for some sidetrips off the road, to the turn-of-the-century mining town of Liberty and along the Old Blewett Pass Highway. They give a glimpse of slower, simpler days.

Liberty

At the turn of the century, Liberty was a bustling community of miners, lured by the gold found in the pine-studded mountains around the town.

Now it's a drowsy little historical nugget of a dozen homes, from 100-year-old cabins to a fancy new log house. The town is tucked away two miles east of Highway 97, along a paved road.

The Liberty Grocery and Gift Shop is the community's only store and the social center. It sells everything from breakfast cereal to souvenir gold nuggets.

Sit at the table on the store's porch, have a cold soda, and listen to store owner Ed Guse's tales of Liberty's past. Walk along the one street, past the cabins bedecked with flower pots and roadside plaques proclaiming Liberty a national historic site and Washington's oldest mining townsite.

The old road

Want to sample a mountain road like they used to be, before big-time highways such as I-90 went slashing through the Cascades?

Then veer off Highway 97 onto the Old Blewett Pass Highway, which runs parallel to the modern route and a few miles west.

It twists through forestland, with views of peaks and valleys, There are no houses, no development along the road - just a few gold-mining claims signposted by creeks in this mineral-rich area.

The U.S. Forest Service keeps this 11-mile stretch of the old highway open (although not in winter) so drivers can see what the road used to be like decades ago. In a word - slow.

The old highway is paved, but mostly just one lane wide (with some pullouts). There are no shoulders, no warning signs, just a ribbon of pavement that twists up and down the hillsides.

This old route, long a trail through the mountains used by natives and miners, was being driven in the early 1900s. The modern U.S. Highway 97 replaced it in the 1960s.

The new route cut the number of road curves dramatically, said Trish Webb, of the state Department of Transportation. There were 248 curves on the old highway; 37 curves on the modern route.

Although dozens of curves remain on the surviving stretch of the old road, at least there's little traffic to worry about. On a recent weekday, I encountered just three other cars, most of them belonging to rockhounds who had parked and gone roaming off the road.

The old route can be driven in an ordinary passenger car. Just count on going 15-20 mph, and watch for the occasional rock on the road. Don't even think of hauling a trailer or taking a big RV; the turns are too tight.

At Blewett Pass itself, the old highway's 4,071-foot summit, there are some knolls to climb up for views and picnics.

There's continuing debate about where Blewett Pass is. Highway 97 actually goes through Swauk Pass, not Blewett Pass which is on the old route. But force of habit has kept the Blewett Pass designation for the modern road.

To get onto the old highway from the south, watch for a turnoff a few miles north of the Highway 97 community of Mineral Springs (a cafe, campground and that's about it).

The old road rejoins Highway 97 to the north beyond Swauk Pass. (The north-end turnoff is poorly marked and easy to miss.)

Many state maps don't show the Old Blewett Pass Highway or other back roads. One that does is the Washington AAA's "Okanogan/Columbia Basin Travel and Recreation Map." Or check in bookstores or map stores for other detailed maps.

Traveling Smart / Close to Home focuses on Pacific Northwest topics on the third Tuesday of the month.