Seven Inches in Ten Days: The Flood That Broke Puget Sound
A warm Chinook melted mountain snow into relentless rain, washing out the Northern Pacific, wrecking the Naphtha launch works, and isolating towns from Tacoma to Seattle.
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.
Not in many years have the people in this section of the country been visited with such constant and heavy rains. Washouts have occurred in all sections. E. B. Olney, the signal observer, states that there has been more rain for the first ten days of the present month than for the entire months of September and October combined. The average rainfall of the first ten days of November during fifteen years has averaged .16 of an inch, while for the first ten days of the present month 7.62 inches, or .76 of an inch a day, have fallen. The Northern Pacific track is overflowed at many points on the main line in the Cascade mountains and on the Seattle branch of the road. The roadbed is damaged to a great extent. The Puyallup river is overflowing its banks and causing great damage on the flat in front of Tacoma. The Naphtha launch works is nearly a total wreck, entailing a loss of from $50,000 to $90,000. Two hundred men were at work yesterday and today trying to prevent the breaking of the dam which was built two years ago to change the course of the Puyallup river. Sacks of sand, hay bales and bundles of brush were used. Families living at Orting had to be rescued from their homes in small boats. Nearly a mile of track has been washed out between Enumclaw and Eagle Gorge and the overland trains are sidetracked. No eastern mail has yet arrived for two days. Landslides have occurred between Olympia and Montesano. All the rivers from Mount Tacoma are swollen, caused by a warm Chinook wind melting the heavy snow on the mountains. The track at Kent is covered with water; wagon roads, houses, bridges and trestle work have been washed away between Tacoma and Seattle and log jams have been broken. The flood is the greatest that has been known for years. Some lives have been lost, mostly Indians. The Puyallup, Duwamish, Green, Black, Skagit, Snohomish, Nooksack, Snoqualmie, Nisqually, Chehalis and Cowlitz rivers are very high, but before the rain commenced today they were beginning to recede.
“Wagon roads, houses, bridges and trestle work have been washed away between Tacoma and Seattle and log jams have been broken.”
The 1891 flood showed how quickly Puget Sound's rivers—already engineered for mills, rail and towns—could reclaim the lowlands. The same river flats are now dense urban neighborhoods, and atmospheric rivers still test the same rail corridors and floodplain developments.
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