The Day the Mountains Slid into the Tracks
A massive landslide near Palmer paralyzed Northern Pacific rail traffic, forcing stranded passengers to walk between trains.
A heavy landslide on the Northern Pacific railway at Palmer, a small station on the west side of the mountains, delayed traffic from 9 o'clock last night until late this afternoon. By the falling of several hundred cubic yards of earth upon the Northern Pacific track near Palmer this morning, the overland trains were delayed several hours. A strip of earth 300 feet long, twenty feet wide and varying from ten to fifteen feet in thickness, slid down upon the tracks at that point, constituting one of the largest landslides on the Cascade division. This morning the east and westbound passenger trains had to exchange passengers near the scene of the landslide.
“A strip of earth 300 feet long, twenty feet wide and varying from ten to fifteen feet in thickness, slid down upon the tracks at that point.”
Landslides continue to be a perennial threat to the vital rail corridors connecting Seattle to the rest of the country, most notably along the unstable coastal bluffs at Mukilteo and the treacherous mountain passes of the Cascades. Just as in 1891, the region remains at the mercy of the geological volatility of the Pacific Northwest.
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