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Loved ones continue Tootsie Clark's tradition, bring cinnamon rolls to North Cascades Highway

By Maggie Wilson

Photo of Tootsie Clark from Washington State Department of Transportation. "Tootsie at the SR 20 North Cascades Highway gate opening in 1994. Photo courtesy the Clark family"

By Maggie Wilson

This Friday was the first time in decades Tootsie Clark didn't arrive at the opening gates of the North Cascades Highway, holding cinnamon rolls.

This year, Clark's granddaughter pushed open the metal gate. A duo played piano and violin. Patches of snow gleamed, lingering on sides of the road.

Tootsie went to the reopening of the North Cascades Highway every year since the early 1970s.

"She'd arrive early to be first in line and would hand out coffee and, yes, her famous cinnamon rolls, to those waiting in line as well as our crews opening the gate," Washington State Department of Transportation's Mike Allende wrote after Clark died in September of 2017. "And oh boy, were they delicious."

"She just loved the highway," Clark's granddaughter Jurene Brooks said to WSDOT. "And she loved the crews."

Clark, former proprietor of Clark's Skagit River Cabins and Eatery, annually brought cinnamon rolls to share with crews, WSDOT's Andrea E. Petrich said.

Petrich said Clark's granddaughter, Jurene, helped carry on the legacy of her late grandmother this year, spending a week making more than 100 cinnamon rolls to hand out.

Friends of Clark's, regulars at the annual gate opening who became known as "Tootsie's Gang," were there, too.

Clark's cinnamon rolls, by recipe, are still at Glacier Peak Resort and Winery, the renamed business where once she sold hers.

Clark died last year at 95 years old.

State Route 20, or the North Cascades Highway, is the northernmost route across the Cascade Mountain Range in Washington.

Watch video from Tootsie Clark's last SR 20 gate opening below.

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