Great Northern Railroad's Pioneer Burial Ground in the Cascades
Leavenworth, WA 98826
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
No admission; site is on private land — verify access before visiting
Access
Limited Access
Dirt path through apple orchards, uphill approach off North Road
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1892 · Great Northern Railroad History · Pioneer Settlement · Frontier Labor History
Leavenworth Cemetery — also referenced as the Old Leavenworth Cemetery or the North Road Cemetery — is believed to be the oldest burial ground in Leavenworth, Washington. It was started by the Great Northern Railroad in or about 1892, before the town itself was formally established in 1906. The cemetery sat on private railroad land just east of the entrance to Tumwater Canyon. The Great Northern provided free interment to its deceased employees, and the plot was enclosed with a picket fence visible in surviving early-1930s photographs.
When construction of the railroad pushed through the Cascade Range in the 1890s, Leavenworth's first settlers arrived: miners, fur traders, and loggers drawn by the rail expansion. Many were buried in the cemetery as the work progressed and the population grew. A September 13, 1905 article in the Wenatchee Republic reported approximately 75 burials at the site and noted that the existing cemetery — cut into the sides of a coulee — was filling to capacity, with new graves being blasted into the coulee walls.
The city of Leavenworth sold the cemetery in 1907 as the rail-era boom subsided. Records from this period confirm at least 74 documented burials, most traced through obituaries in the Leavenworth Echo. By 1966 only three headstones remained standing, marking the graves of children who died in 1893, 1894, and 1904. When the cemetery was surveyed in spring 1999, no intact stone markers remained — only a few stone bases on the grounds.
Since 1926 the cemetery has been held by the Leavenworth Cemetery Association, now defunct. The land is currently owned by a local construction company. Community volunteers — including members of the Upper Valley Historical Society — have cleaned the site twice yearly since 2013.
Sources
The folk tradition attached to Leavenworth Cemetery is consistent with the occupational profile of the people buried there: railroad construction laborers who spent their working lives in heavy physical labor and are described in local accounts as continuing it after death.
Reports collected by regional paranormal researchers describe figures of men carrying lanterns moving through the cemetery grounds at night — a motion pattern consistent with rail-work nighttime activity in the 1890s. Auditory accounts include the rhythmic pounding associated with driving railroad spikes and whistling, both sounds historically associated with Great Northern construction crews of the period.
These reports are consistent with what paranormal researchers describe as residual-haunting patterns — repeated occupational actions leaving a perceptual impression at a location rather than an active, responsive presence. The specific details — lanterns, spike-hammering, whistling — align closely with the documented occupations and historical era of the people interred at the site.
No formal paranormal investigation of the cemetery has been documented in available sources. The accounts originate in regional haunted-places documentation and the oral tradition of the Leavenworth area, where the cemetery's history as a Great Northern company plot is well known and the grounds remain accessible to visitors.
Access the Old Leavenworth Cemetery via a dirt driveway off North Road, approximately half a mile uphill past apple orchards near the Icicle rail station. The grounds contain older plots from the Great Northern Railroad era alongside more recent graves. The site is the town's first burial ground. Verify land access before visiting — the property changed hands when the Great Northern Railroad land was sold.
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