Cascade Loop Scenic Byway

At Twisp, in the Methow Valley, State Route 153 comes up the valley from Pateros and ends. State Route 20 begins there and runs west over the mountains toward Coupeville. The junction is one seam in the Cascade Loop Scenic Byway, a 440-mile circuit around the North Cascades built from eight numbered highways. Wikipedia lists them in this order:

• US 2 from Everett to Sunnyslope
• US 97 Alternate from Sunnyslope to Chelan
• US 97 from Chelan to Pateros
• SR 153 from Pateros to Twisp
• SR 20 from Twisp to Coupeville
• SR 525 from Coupeville to Mukilteo
• SR 526 from Mukilteo to Everett
• a short piece of I-5 in Everett

Washington State Tourism puts the drive at nine hours and recommends five days for it.

The Cascade Loop Association promotes the route and advises driving it counter-clockwise, which it says gives the easiest access to the best views. Its practical pages also carry warnings:

• Cell reception drops out across some terrain, so start a GPS app near a town before entering those stretches.
• Washington State Department of Transportation road work brings slowdowns and stops.
• The hiking, climbing, fishing, rafting, and riding along the route call for a Discover Pass and permits in hand.

“Getting a ticket is NOT the souvenir you want to take home!” the page says.

Nine regions and a passport stamp

The association divides the loop into nine regions:

• Snohomish River Valley. The route begins here near Puget Sound.
• Stevens Pass Greenway. The road follows the Skykomish River up to 4,061-foot Stevens Pass.
• Leavenworth and the Cascade Foothills. This region centers on the Bavarian-style village of Leavenworth.
• Wenatchee and the Columbia River. The Wenatchee Valley was historically called the Apple Capital of the World.
• Lake Chelan Valley. The road descends into a glacier-carved valley. Washington State Tourism calls Lake Chelan the state’s deepest lake. Stehekin, at its north end, can be reached only by boat, floatplane, or trail.
• Methow Valley. It runs from Pateros to the Cascade crest, through Twisp, Winthrop, and Mazama. The association calls it “Washington state’s Wild West.” It also places Methow Trails here, which it describes as the largest Nordic ski trail system in North America.
• North Cascades. Concrete and Marblemount are the gateways to Diablo Lake and the Washington Pass Overlook.
• Skagit Valley and Fidalgo Island. The association’s corridor plan notes bald eagles here and fields of tulips, daffodils, and irises across the lowlands.
• Whidbey Island. The island is 55 miles long and includes Deception Pass State Park and Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve.

Three of these segments are byways in their own right: the Stevens Pass Greenway, the North Cascades Scenic Highway, and the Whidbey Scenic Isle Way. Sherrye Wyatt of Island County Tourism said of the island segment in 2021: “We are one of only a few scenic byways in the country located entirely on an island. We’re proud to serve as the coastal ‘sea leg’ of the magnificent Cascade Loop.”

The association’s free 2026/27 Travel Guide carries a Souvenir Passport. Travelers collect stamps at participating stops in each region and win prizes along the way. A full set of nine enters them in a drawing for a prize package.

The association’s calendar of seasons:

• Spring: tulips and daffodils in the Skagit.
• Summer: farmers markets and high-country hiking.
• Autumn: foliage, the apple and pear harvest, and Crush in wine country.

The board that runs the association has at least one member from every region. Its members include:

• Penni Eggers of the River Run Inn in Winthrop
• Henry Sladek, owner of the Cascadia Inn in Skykomish
• Greg Taylor of Liberty Orchards, the Aplets & Cotlets maker in Cashmere
• Valerie Stafford, who heads the Concrete Chamber and owns Act One Ice Cream and Theatre
• Krista Loercher of Whidbey Island Kayaking

Roni Freund is executive director. Her predecessor, Annette Pitts, said in 2021 that side trips are part of the point. “Langley’s honestly one of our most popular destinations on the loop,” Pitts said. “Travelers are not sitting in their cars.”

Washington Pass and the winter gate

West of Twisp, SR 20 passes Winthrop and Mazama. It then climbs past Liberty Bell and the Early Winters Spires toward the Washington Pass and Rainy Pass viewpoints, which the association places at milepost 157.6. WSDOT’s pass report for the highway gives an elevation of 5,477 feet.

Snow and avalanches close the high section every winter, and accounts of the gate differ slightly:

• Washington State Tourism: WSDOT typically closes the road between mileposts 134 and 171 from late November until late April or early May.
• HistoryLink: the closure covers a 40-mile stretch between Thunder Arm and Early Winters Creek, usually from November or December until April or May. HistoryLink adds that in one winter, the warm one of 1976–1977, the road never closed.

WSDOT reported SR 20 open as of Sunday, June 14, 2026. It traditionally reports conditions on the pass from November 1 to April 1. While the gate is shut, the full loop cannot be driven, and the association’s advice is to “simply backtrack.”

A map in the PowWow Room

According to the association, the loop began with Gordon Ohme, a Wenatchee businessman, in 1978. On a visit to Seattle, he saw visitors crowding downtown and the millions living in the metro area. He also saw that no one was making a coordinated effort to send any of them on to the rest of the state.

He gathered friends at a local watering hole, then called the PowWow Room at the Chieftain Inn. They pulled out a map and marked the places they thought most beautiful and, in the association’s words, “simply–fun.” Most of those places turned out to lie on roads that were already built and maintained. Connected, the marks made a loop that could be reached easily from Seattle.

That year, the Chelan County businesspeople formed the Cascade Loop Association, and in time it began publishing the printed travel guide. The newest road on their map was the highway across the North Cascades, which had opened only six years before.

Eighty years over the mountains

HistoryLink’s account of SR 20 begins with an earlier route that also ran to Twisp. In 1893 the legislature put up $20,000 for a road across the North Cascades. By 1895 the State Road Commission had chosen the Cascade Wagon Road. It ran from Marblemount along the Cascade River, over Cascade Pass to Stehekin, then east to Twisp.

Work began in earnest in 1896. Floods on the Cascade River took out much of it the next year, and the Twisp River damaged the eastern end. Work stopped in 1899. All that came of the effort was a pack trail over the pass, plus local roads that still lead west from Twisp and east from Marblemount before dead-ending miles into the mountains.

The project revived in fits over the next half century:

• 1920s. Skagit and Okanogan county businessmen formed the Cascade Pass Pilgrims. They led legislators and reporters into the mountains on horseback. The legislature appropriated about a quarter-million dollars, but the Depression ended the funding.
• 1932. Highway engineer Ike Munson surveyed a more northerly line. It ran from Twisp to Winthrop, through Mazama and over Washington and Rainy passes, then down Granite and Ruby creeks to the Skagit above Diablo Dam.
• 1953. Boosters formed the North Cross-State Highway Association and revived the horseback trips. They took writers, legislators, and Governor Dan Evans along the proposed route. “Most came back believers,” HistoryLink says.
• 1956 onward. George Zahn, a Methow orchardist and former state senator, rode the route with Munson in 1956. He joined the State Highway Commission in 1961 and later chaired it. “George Zahn was as responsible as any man ever was for getting the highway finished,” Munson said in 1972.

Construction began in 1959 with 5.3 miles from Diablo Dam to Thunder Arm. Crews met hazards in every season:

• Solid rock wore out 3.5-inch drill bits every 50 feet.
• Rockslides buried two workers a week apart in 1962.
• In cold snaps, icicles hung over the work sites from frozen waterfalls and had to be knocked down before work could go on.
• In summer, the threats were yellow jackets and rattlesnakes.

North Cascades National Park was created in 1968, around the same time. Crews modified dynamite charges so nearby trees would not be blown down. They also darkened the concrete in some bridges to match the rock.

On September 29, 1968, a rough dirt road was finished, and nearly 1,000 people reached Rainy Pass by four-wheel drive, motorcycle, dune buggy, and horse. Miss Washington Highways, Jeannine Gill, cut the ribbon. Two vehicles edged toward each other with men seated on their hoods: John Pierce of Bellingham for the west and Les Holloway (or Hollaway) of Twisp for the east. When the vehicles were close enough, the two men shook hands.

Most cars could not yet drive the road, and jeeps averaged about 10 miles an hour on much of it. Evans, facing reelection, promised it would be finished by the end of his next term in late 1972. He won, and it was. Construction from 1959 to 1972 cost $23.9 million.

Opening day was Saturday, September 2, 1972, and it was sunny and warm. Ceremonies began that morning in Winthrop, whose downtown had just been remodeled with faux Old West facades. Evans then led a caravan over the passes to a second ribbon-cutting at Newhalem. The procession reached the Sedro-Woolley high-school stadium about 5 p.m.

A legend later grew from that day. Ted Bundy had been hired by the Evans campaign to pass out literature and buttons. He afterward claimed he had been the governor’s driver, and so the first to officially cross the highway. Evans dismissed the story in a 2012 interview with the Methow Grist, saying his driver had been State Patrolman Bill Lathrop: “It’s totally bogus. ... It never happened.”

Chargers, a corridor plan, and a federal list

By 2018 the association had been joined by the Cascade Loop Foundation. The association promotes travel to the byway, and the foundation was created to develop it and coordinate its partners.

Electrification came in stages:

• 2012. WSDOT used federal Recovery Act money to have AeroVironment install fast chargers on US 2 in Sultan, Skykomish, Leavenworth, and Wenatchee, spaced 25 to 50 miles apart. WSDOT called it the nation’s first electric vehicle-friendly scenic byway route.
• June 16, 2015. Governor Jay Inslee joined a gathering at Pybus Public Market in Wenatchee as the whole loop was declared EV-ready. Level 2 chargers had gone in along the route, including at the Twisp River Pub, Pine Near RV Park, and Mazama Country Inn.
• 2017. Homeowners and small businesses filled in more of the map. Nancy Yarges, co-owner of the Skykomish Deli and Liquor on US 2, had let AeroVironment put a fast charger on her lot and later bought an electric car herself. “When you do need to stop and do it (recharge) it does encourage me to at least get out of the car and go for a walk,” she told the Monroe Monitor. “I talk to people I normally wouldn’t have.”

The push for federal designation began in 2011 with a corridor management plan, according to the Methow Valley News. Planners held traveling workshop series around the loop in the fall of 2012 and the summer of 2013, and the plan was last updated in February 2020.

On January 19, 2021, the U.S. Department of Transportation approved the Cascade Loop as one of 34 new National Scenic Byways. The Skagit Valley Herald reported that no Washington road had earned such a designation since 2005.

Dan Kuperberg, owner of the Chewuch Inn in Winthrop and a board member, said the public meetings counted for as much as the designation. “Everyone who is involved or affected by that designation needed to have a seat at the table and have shared their opinions,” he said. “That, from a personal perspective, was the best thing I’ve been involved in for a long time.”