The Swarm That Stalled the Trains
A plague of army worms in a Washington swamp grew so thick they brought a locomotive to a grinding, slippery halt.
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.
We learn that a devastating insect, called the army worm, has made an appearance in a swamp in the county. Their increase in number is very rapid, and the worms have alarmed the farmers in that neighborhood very much. One day last week, the worms were so numerous on the railroad track that the driving wheels of the locomotive refused to pull the train, slipping around continually instead of going ahead. Sand had to be placed on the track before the train would move forward.
“The worms were so numerous on the railroad track that the driving wheels to the locomotive refused to pull the train.”
While modern trains are no longer derailed by migrating insects, the story highlights the vulnerability of early Washington infrastructure to the volatility of the natural landscape. It serves as a reminder that Seattle’s growth—from the territorial days to the present—has always been a friction-filled contest between industrial ambition and the biological reality of the Pacific Northwest.
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