On November 28, 1909, after heavy rains, a Great Northern work train bound for Aldergrove tumbled down a forty-foot embankment west of Sapperton, killing twenty-two of the fifty-two Japanese workmen inside a boxcar. A creek had overflowed which weakened the roadbed's gravel fill. Here the "big hook" from Everett, Washington, attempts to retrieve the locomotive, whose crew survived by jumping before being pulled backwards into the washout. Four months earlier, another serious accident occurred nearby.