Poor ore quality and quantity played a role in the decline, but the failure of the railway to maintain service to Monte Cristo in the face of floods, landslides, winter snows, fires, and other disasters was also a factor in the collapse of the industry.

The Everett and Monte Cristo tracks gave access to large areas of virgin forest, so the railroad was used to move raw logs down to existing mills.

This ran the tracks through the steep-sided Robe Canyon, in some places mere feet above the flood-prone South Fork of the Stilliguamish River.

Over time, revenue fell as the mines played out, the easy timber was cut, and the road network extended competition further into the mountains.

A consortium of Northwest mining interests led by Fred Wilmans and Judge Hiram Bond, bought out many of the claims and began to explore bringing in a railroad.

[5] At roughly the same, New York investment bankers Charles Colby and Colgate Hoyt, both of whom served on the Northern Pacific Railway's executive committee, were looking for ways to profit from their railroad's terminus on Puget Sound.

[6] An agreement was struck between the two groups committing the mines to produce a minimum amount of ore for 15 years and the railroad to ship it out at a fixed price.

Another railroad consortium, this time funded by local businessmen, founded the Snohomish, Skykomish, and Spokane Railway and Transportation Company on April 19, 1889.

[7] The "Three S", as it came to be known was intended to lure the western terminus of the Great Northern Railway to Everett by meeting the line as it emerged from the Cascade Mountains.

Compounding the challenges for the Everett and Monte Cristo, in June 1893, the British House of Commons issued a recommendation that Her Majesty's Indian mints no longer produce silver rupees.

[17] After the floods of 1897, however, the railway had survey crews on the ground seeking a better route to Monte Cristo, suggesting that the Rockefeller team had legitimate questions about the wisdom of investing yet more money in treacherous Robe Canyon.

[30] Rock slides in Robe Canyon caused outages almost every winter, and with the reduced traffic, the Northern Pacific saw less reason to repair the damage.

On the surface, the Hartford and Eastern, with the associated timber lands sold by the Ruckers, was a good fit for Puget Sound Pulp and Paper.

In exchange for their bonds, the creditors received the Hartford and Eastern and the rest of the former Rucker assets, a pulp mill in Everett, and a small amount of cash.

Past Robe Canyon, and 29 miles beyond Hartford Junction, the railway reached Silverton, which developed as a secondary mining center along the line.

In August 1893, a premature blast started a landslide that swept a dozen men to their deaths in the Stillaguamish, unable to escape their ropes.

[44] The camps in which the railroad men found themselves were legally dry as the Snohomish County Commission decided not to approve any liquor licenses along the route.

As a result, much of the initial clearing, grading, tunneling, and bridging on the Eastern Division was accomplished by hauling supplies on a corduroy road using pack animals.

[62] In December this schedule was reduced to three trains a week, but thanks to the use of a modern steam-powered snowplow, the tracks to Monte Cristo were kept open all winter.

The concentrator was completed in mid-February 1894, and by August hopper cars of ore were finally headed out of Monte Cristo, bound for the smelter in Everett.

Heavy rains in November 1893 flooded portions of the railway from the lowlands all the way to the new station yard in Monte Cristo and threatened at least one of the Stilliguamish bridges.

One eyewitness said that the river rose thirty feet above its normal level, and that the "rails were broken as if they were glass or bent into all sorts of fantastic shapes".

In mid-December, General Manager J. R. Crooker and President Frederick Gates, announced that since the mines and railroad were losing money, the washed out sections would not be rebuilt.

It poured yet more concrete to protect the rails in Robe Canyon, filled in some smaller trestles, straightened some curves, and enlarged culverts under the roadbed.

After acquiring the Monte Cristo Railway, the new owners at the Northern Pacific moved its modern rotary snow plow to the transcontinental line crossing the Cascades.

The Boston-American Mining Company went so far as to build a new concentrator at Monte Cristo, but it, too, failed before shipping any ore.[18] While traffic on the railway was down from the boom years, natural hazards continued at their usual pace.

Temporary fixes to trestles and bridges were the best that could be done, and the line became incapable of supporting heavy steam engines and conventional passenger and freight cars.

[34] Eventually, the level of maintenance on the railway declined to the point where it was impossible to run even the tiny four-wheel gas "speeders" on portions of the line.

Soundview Pulp Company continued to run occasional trains to haul out timber, and local residents used speeders and even hand cars to travel on parts of the road that were still passable, but by 1933 there was less need for the railroad.

However, the 20 miles of the Mountain Loop Highway between Verlot and Barlow Pass was built on the original railway grade, perhaps the most significant legacy of the Everett and Monte Cristo.