Editing Mount Vernon, Washington (section)

===Later events and transportation===
The city again grew in the 1910s when it became the southern terminus for the Bellingham & Skagit Railway's [[interurban]] [[railroad line]], which would carry passengers as well as freight between [[Bellingham, Washington|Bellingham]] and Mount Vernon as well as [[Burlington, Washington|Burlington]] and [[Sedro-Woolley]]. The line opened on August 31, 1912, with passenger trips to Bellingham every two hours during the day and freight operating at night. Mount Vernon business owners soon began pressuring the railway company, since renamed the Pacific Northwest Traction Company, to extend the rails south to connect with the interurban line in [[Everett, Washington|Everett]]. Plagued by a weakening economy, the onset of America's entrance into [[World War I]] in 1917, and numerous [[infrastructure]] failures that led to line closures for months at a time, extension of the interurban was put off indefinitely. The completion of the [[Pacific Highway (US)|Pacific Highway]] between [[Seattle]] and Bellingham in 1920 posed a great threat to the still incomplete interurban line. After a series of accidents and bridge [[Washout (erosion)|wash out]]s, passenger service on the money-losing line was permanently suspended in June 1930.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Wing |first1=Warren W. |title=To Seattle By Trolley |location=Edmonds, Washington |publisher=Pacific Fast Mail |year=1988 |pages=47–65 |isbn=0-915713-16-0}}</ref> In 1969, [[Interstate 5]] was built through downtown, severing it from most of the residential district and opening the farm lands north of the city to urban development, where many of Mount Vernon's downtown businesses moved.