Talk:North Cascades

I think there's room for making subregions of North Cascades. As I factor out the county articles, I'm getting a feel for what that should be. However, I don't think that "East" and "West" of the Cascades are the right divisions. The Cascades are pretty wide, so a big chunk of the region is neither "East of" or "West of", it's "On top of" the Cascades. Subregions should divide the mountains from the lowlands to the west, but at least Whatcom and Snohomish counties extend into the mountains. I don't have a clear idea for what the regions should be yet. Ideas: Skagit Valley, Bellingham region, Everett region, Coleville Indian Reservation region. (WT-en) JimDeLaHunt 02:09, 14 June 2007 (EDT)

I think it's not ideal to put the list of counties, and links to county governments, in the intro section. This part of the article is to give the traveller a feel for the region, what makes it interesting, what makes it distinct. A recitation of political boundaries and links to websites doesn't have that effect for me. I think this list belongs in Understand. I duplicated the list there, and will let discussion unfold here before changing the intro. (WT-en) JimDeLaHunt 02:09, 14 June 2007 (EDT)

Perhaps Bellingham is the last large US city on I-5 before reaching Canada, but the statement as written in somewhat misleading.

I'm looking to clean up articles in this area over the coming weeks. I can't think of any way to make this grouping of Northwest Washington and North Central Cascades useful. Those two should both be direct sub-regions of Washington state that are not linked together, and this page should be merged/deleted.

• The Cascade Crest is the foremost geographic and cultural divide of the entire Pacific Northwest (I would argue even moreso than the WA/OR state boundary). The argument above from 2007 does not seem locally informed, as even west slope and east slope Cascades are quite distinct, and there's no population or listings in the center of the range except for the mountain pass ski resorts, so they don't have enough WV content to be separate.
• If you want to group two sides of the Cascades together, this is the worst place to do that, as it is the widest and least passable part of the entire range. The only link between these two sides is the North Cascades Highway, which goes for 70 miles between services and is closed for seven months each year.
• The region name is confusing and misleading. "North Cascades" is used almost solely to describe North Cascades National Park and surrounding areas with similar geology. Nobody would ever describe the coastal destinations as part of the Cascades, and calling Kittitas County "North" is also a problem, as that area is typically referred to as "Central Cascades" or "Central Washington".

If there's a desire to conserve the number of Washington state subregions, I'm willing to propose several other groupings that make more sense than this one.

There simply isn't anything sensible that can be said about both Anacortes and the Grand Coulee Dam that doesn't apply to Washington state as a whole. Gerode (talk) 23:12, 14 June 2026 (UTC)Reply