When the Water Came Up to the Post Office: Floods Cut Seattle’s Rail and Mail Lines

Water reached the basement of the building at Sixth and Alder streets, but it was being pumped out as far as possible. On Front street the water reached Taylor street, and Washington street was covered. The Chamber of Commerce building was nearly surrounded, and its first floor was covered to some depth. The lower portion of town was submerged. West of Front street all the bottom lands were under water, and a large number of barns were [damaged], besides doing other damage.

The Great Northern coast line was still broken by the Skagit River floods, and trains were not running north of [Burlington?]. To accommodate shippers, the company attached an airbrake box car to the passenger train going as far as [Sunwood?], for local freight shipments until regular freight trains resumed.

The water of the Skagit near [Cedarhome?] rose more than a foot yesterday at [Woolley?], and if it falls twenty inches more today the Great Northern people say they will have their washed-out tracks between [Burlington?] and Mount Vernon repaired within twenty-four hours afterward.

Owing to the prostration of the wires along the Great Northern main line no reports of the condition of the road could be gathered in this city. The line was all right between here and Leavenworth, but the track in the Wenatchee valley was flooded and telegraph poles washed away.

The Northern Pacific blockade east of Hope, Idaho, continued, and it would be some days yet before the tracks were repaired, more than fifty miles of track being under water and more or less washed out.

Between Kelso and Portland another steamboat was put in service. The Joseph A. Kellogg connected with the morning trains from this city and Portland and transferred passengers and baggage. The ferryboat Tacoma connected with the evening trains, carrying the cars through. The steamboat [name unclear] was sent out on the Columbia River yesterday by the Northern Pacific between Pasco and Wallula Junction, to enable passengers to reach the Walla Walla region and facilitate connection with the Union Pacific road at Pendleton.

General Manager C. W. Case, of the Great Northern Railway Company, arrived in the city last evening over the Great Northern by special train from Wenatchee, where he had been investigating the flood blockade for several days. When the Great Northern road was blockaded by the high water at Bonner's Ferry, Mr. Case started to come around from Helena on the Northern Pacific and was caught and held several days by the flood on that line at Horse Plains. Getting through, he could not return over either road, and so came on to Spokane and thence to Wenatchee to see if anything could be done to expedite the opening of the line to traffic as quickly as possible after the floods should subside. He was stopping at the [Rainier?].

Business men were much annoyed by delays in the mails. About two thirds of all the mail received here came over the Northern Pacific road, and the interruption of traffic by the floods had prevented the receipt of any mails over that road since Saturday night, when three days' mail was received. Sunday night three [Northern Pacific] sacks were received, but none since then. All the delayed California and Canadian Pacific mails were received yesterday.