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The North Cascades Scenic Highway, also known as State Route
20, is a ribbon of road whose course travels a corridor of rich
diversity-through broad agricultural valleys and towering forests,
through a narrow river gorge and some of Washington's most rugged
peaks, known as "America's Alps." Along the way, its
winding path speaks of glaciations, of Native cultures, fisheries,
and trade routes over the mountains. It tells of National Parks
and National Forests, of fire lookouts, poets, miners, and packers.
It carries the grand vision of providing public power via three
immense hydroelectric dams that still generate electricity for
Seattle. Today, the North Cascades Highway connects both sides
of the mountains, just as the Skagit River valley, which it follows
much of its way, has done for millennia. Both the road and the
enduring Skagit River are a passage into the North Cascades mountain
heart.
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