Washington State's Route 20, also called the North Cascades Highway, traverses through some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in the Pacific Northwest; and, like its meandering roads, its history long and convoluted.
Though the route's origin can't be known for certain, its creation is credited to the Native Americans. For over eight thousand years various tribes were said to have used the road, then a narrow foot corridor, as a trading route from Washington's Eastern Plateau Country to the Pacific Coast. Then along came the gold rush of 1849. Fortune-seekers flooded to the area when a plethora of pelt-bearing animals and gold deposits were discovered within the Cascades. To better access these resources, the State Road Commission began planning a route that would pass through the mountainous region. Funding was obtained some years later, and the first attempt to build such a road commenced in 1896 over almost entirely the same foot corridor the Native Americans had used for millenniums.
Floods, protests, and funding would delay the cross-mountain highway's completion for 74 years, or until 1972, four years after Cascades National Park was established.
Washington's Route 20, which now leads motor vehicles through the Cascade Mountain Range, still holds true to roughly the same narrow foot corridor that was created 8,000 years earlier. Perhaps the Indians got it right the first time, or perhaps something else is at work here. The poem below should provide some food for thought:
The Calf Path
by S.W. Foss
One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day,
By a lone dog that passed that way.
And then a wise bell-wether sheep,
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep;
And drew the flock behind him too,
As good bell-wethers always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade.
Through those old woods a path was made.
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about;
And uttered words of righteous wrath,
Because 'twas such a crooked path.
But still they followed - do not laugh -
The first migrations of that calf.
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.
This forest path became a lane,
that bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load,
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half,
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare;
And soon the central street was this,
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half,
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand rout,
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o'er his crooked journey went,
The traffic of a continent.
A Hundred thousand men were led,
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent,
To well established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind,
Along the calf-paths of the mind;
And work away from sun to sun,
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred grove,
Along which all their lives they move.
But how the wise old wood gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah! many things this tale might teach -
But I am not ordained to preach.