The Great Flood of 1888
Torrential rains and melting snow paralyze the Snohomish and Stillaguamish valleys, destroying bridges and disrupting rail travel to Monte Cristo.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The heavy rains of the last few days have swollen all the rivers and the warm wind has melted the snow, bringing it down to add to the deluge. The lowlands of the Snohomish are under water and the raging torrent of the south fork of the Stillaguamish has done some damage to the Everett & Monte Cristo railroad. The worst flood seems to have occurred in the Stillaguamish valley. The Everett & Monte Cristo railroad sustained two washouts between tunnels 1 and 2. A strong wagon bridge known as the Bogardus bridge went out between 8 and 10 this morning and was carried down the river five miles, striking the center pier of the Everett & Monte Cristo railroad's second crossing. There is no wagon road or train now between Granite Falls and Monte Cristo. In the Snohomish valley, pretty nearly everything was inundated, and north of the town, the washing water undermined the roadbed, requiring a slow cave-in. On the flats near Snohomish, the water was above the fences, and some small dwellings were covered with water.
“Near one of these houses a little gray pussy cat was afloat on a plank, looking desolate and forlorn.”
Flooding remains a constant, rhythmic challenge for the low-lying river valleys of Snohomish County, just as it was in 1888. The infrastructure-first response of the railroads described here echoes current civic debates about the costs of maintaining transportation routes through climate-sensitive landscapes.
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