When the Skagit River Swallowed Mount Vernon: The Great Flood of 1894

The warm weather of this week throughout Washington and Oregon and British Columbia has melted the snow on the mountains so rapidly as to cause great freshets in all the rivers and has produced a serious flood. The Skagit, Fraser, and Columbia rivers are doing the most damage, having overflowed all the lowlands, swamped the crops, and put the whole towns of Mount Vernon and Hamilton under water. Traffic on the Great Northern and Northern Pacific roads is blocked by the water, and great damage has been done to the former road at Fir.

The Skagit river is higher than for fourteen years. At Mount Vernon, the scene was more exciting than ever in its history. At midnight an underground leak was discovered in the dyke about a quarter of a mile from the courthouse. Twenty men worked all night to mend it, but the leak grew in spite of all efforts. A dyke was also put in back of the electric light station, which held the water out until 6 o'clock this morning, when it gave way, and the main street from Capt. Decatur's residence to Myrtle street was quickly under water. The whole town turned out, and 300 men went to work to throw a dyke up in the center of the street. Bales of hay were brought, scrapers put to work, and, as if by magic, a dam three blocks long and two to three feet high was thrown up. So quickly did the water rise, however, that it was all the big force could do to keep ahead of it.

The electric light works were the first to suffer. Howe's shoe store came next. Lasselman's restaurant, McLean's office, Mount Vernon Post, Keej's barber shop, Patterson Ferguson's saloon, and Sweeney's restaurant soon had water so deep in the first floor that they had to move out. Business was entirely suspended, all working at the dykes.

At 4 o'clock the large dyke suddenly gave way below town, and two men, Ellis Douty and Walter Williams, were swept into the rushing torrent that immediately commenced to inundate the lower part of the town. The men were rescued. Many families had already moved out, but hundreds of people are sleeping tonight with from six inches to two feet of water on the floor and more sure to come. The temporary dyke on the business street broke in several places at 6 o'clock this evening, and there is not one-third of the town out of water now.

The farms of Magnus Anderson, Harry Mills, Peter Kutvet, James Gilligan, Jasper Gates, Robert Abrams, J. B. Moorman and many others will be under water before morning. The Skagit delta, back of Skagit City and Fir, a triangular piece of land five miles wide, is under water, and the farms of Doc Polson, Anthony Barrett, James Talbot, T. P. Hastie, Edward Good, Peter Olsen, Charles Anderson and many others are under four to six feet of water.

Reports from Hamilton are that the whole town is under water and that the river has risen a foot since morning. Railroad and wagon bridges from one end of the county to the other are in great danger. The city is in total darkness, for the electric light plant is under water. The three largest mills are surrounded by water and cannot run until it recedes. Nearly all the sidewalks in the city are floating and great logs from the river are rolling through the streets, and canoes and skiffs are in use to get about town. It will be days and perhaps weeks before the water subsides.