Gumption, grit and greed accomplished Manifest Destiny and the transcontinental railroad secured it. A number of wonderful books have been written about the Golden Age of Steam and the men (robber barons and buccaneers) whose vision, brazenness, cunning and ruthlessness enabled "the true alchemy of the age, which transmuted the otherwise useless resources of a country into gold." Hear that Lonesome Whistle Blow (1977) by Dee Brown is one such work. Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like It in the World (2002)-with apologies to David Lavender's The Great Pretender (1970)-and Empire Express (1999) by David Bain are others well worth reading.

But the railroad's mastery of America's geography came at great expense. The White Cascade (2007) by Gary Krist is the story of one such cost, a horrific cost. It documents the 1910 Wellington disaster on the Great Northern Railroad (GNR) line through Stevens Pass, a treacherously pitched slot in the Cascade Mountains of central Washington, and "the weakest link in the GNR's transportation chain" connecting Minneapolis and Seattle.

The Cascades are less lofty than the Rocky Mountains, but nonetheless are more rugged, precipitous and densely timbered. The massif also is regarded as the snowiest region in the contiguous United States. Their winding canyons and steep-sided peaks of 6,000-8,000 feet posed a nearly insurmountable obstacle to rail connection of the East to Seattle. After others had failed, it took John F. Stevens (later, chief engineer of the Panama Canal) to identify a route for a rail line through the mountains, wending precariously, improbably along the course of the Wenatchie River below. The line up and over "Steven's Pass" was completed in 1893, at a cost of millions and dozens of lives. That included a 13,283-foot tunnel-"the dirtiest, blackest hole that a man ever went into"-that terminated about half a mile east of Wellington. The tunnel alone took three years to create with the labor of 2,400 men.

The entire line was the brainchild of GNR owner and president James J. Hill, "the shaggy-bearded, barb-wired, one-eyed son-of-a-bitch of western railroading." It was overseen by GNR's Cascade division superintendent James Henry O'Neill, who proved to be both hero and scapegoat of the Wellington disaster.

On average, Stevens Pass receives about 50 feet of snow per year. An exception was the winter of 1897-98, when 140 feet of snow accumulated in the pass. Bisecting the Pacific Northwest, the Cascades captures moisture from every weather system that crosses them. Typically, the snow season is subsiding by late February. But not in 1910. That month, one major snowstorm after another blanketed and reburied the mountain range. Time and again, the valiant O'Neill called on his armada of rotary-plow engines and legions of shovel-wielding transient laborers ("birds of passage") to keep the tracks clear and the trains moving.

On February 21, 1910, Everett, Washington's Daily Herald carried the banner headline, "Cold Wave is Hieing Hither." At Wellington, initially a construction camp and subsequently a remote station for the GNR, snow began falling heavily again on Tuesday, February 22, "like someone was plucking a chicken," and accumulating at a rate of about one foot per hour. The temperature hied hither to 10 degrees F.

As the snows fell nearly unabated over the next several days, the snow-removal crews worked frantically to keep the tracks open, but spirits, energy and coal reserves dwindled. Temperatures rose and fell, creating layer upon layer of wet snow-"Cascade cement"-on the mountain slopes and ridge tops, increasing the danger and repeated inconvenience of snow slides and avalanches.

Into this scene, on Thursday, April 24, chugged the NPR train #25, the burgundy-colored Seattle Express, with its H-Class Pacific engine, two steam-heated sleepers, two day-coaches, and mail, baggage and observation cars. And 55 passengers.

Also making the grade but likewise unable to proceed because of the deep snow (exceeding 17 feet), breakdown of the overworked rotary plows and desertion by overworked birds of passage, was GNR's five-car Fast Mail train, #27.

The two trains were shunted to parallel spur tracks along the main line, on a manmade 50-foot ledge, with the Fast Mail train on the outside spur. That kept the main track open for the operable rotaries and because there was no place else to put them, except, perhaps, back in the Great Northern tunnel, which railroaders considered worse than folly. Also, those spur tracks were located where there had never been a snow slide.

And the storm continued.

At 1:42 a.m., Friday, April 25, 1910, as 125 people slept aboard the two stranded trains, the integrity of multiple and variably dense layers of unstable snow on the mountain 1,000 feet above Wellington gave way and loosed several acres of snow that slid downward, gaining size and momentum and terrible sound as it advanced.

The White Cascade, brilliantly, aptly titled, is a magnificent 315-page chronicle of America's deadliest avalanche. It is so well constructed, documented and detailed that it reads almost like a fiction thriller. It relates a tragedy of progress, of pitting reason, ingenuity, will and hubris against Nature. It is a reminder of what's in charge.

This book was published by Henry Holt and Company, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010 (phone 646-307-5095; sales@henryholt.com). It retails for $26.00.