On Sunday, October 21, 1906, a Skykomish local passenger train due into Monroe at 7:35 a.m. crashes into an eastbound freight train at Fern Bluff, two and a half miles east of Monroe. Both trains are traveling at full speed.
Both locomotives were demolished. Two firemen and an engineer aboard the smaller train were killed and several passengers were injured.
The light locomotive pulling the local was knocked into a shapeless mass of old iron, with trucks, tender, and boiler all piled together. Of the three working in that engine who died, one lived long enough to be brought to Monroe on the wrecking train at noon. He died at the hospital.
The crew of the freight train appeared to be to blame, as they were running on the passenger train’s schedule.
