How a Tractor Protest Ended Up Saving Washington DC

For two weeks, the tractors camped out on the National Mall were Washington DC's biggest headache. Residents complained about the traffic, the noise, and the torn-up grass. Then the snow started falling, and the same machines everyone wanted gone turned into one of the only things keeping the city moving.

A Protest Nobody Wanted

The tractors belonged to the American Agriculture Movement, a group of farmers pushing Congress for relief from falling crop prices and rising costs. On February 5, 1979, hundreds of tractors rolled into Washington DC for a second "Tractorcade," having traveled from as far as Texas, Michigan, and Colorado at a top speed of about 15 miles per hour. The convoy snarled traffic across the city and pushed Metro ridership to a single-day record.

Police responded by barricading the tractors on the National Mall, confining the farmers to the same ground they had occupied. The city estimated the standoff was costing around $125,000 a day, and the National Park Service later put damage to the Mall's grounds at close to $1 million. Residents and members of Congress had little patience left for the visitors camped in their front yard.

Then the Snow Came

On February 18 and 19, 1979, a Presidents' Day storm hit the region far harder than forecasters expected. They had called for two to four inches. Instead, more than two feet of snow buried parts of the city. Interstates 95 and 495 nearly shut down completely, all three area airports closed, and Washington's entire bus fleet of about 500 vehicles was pulled off the roads, with roughly 90 stuck in the drifts.

The Machines Nobody Wanted Became the Ones That Worked

With the city paralyzed, the impounded tractors turned out to be some of the only vehicles that could still move through the drifts. Farmers began plowing streets on their own and offering their equipment to DC and its suburbs.

According to Boundary Stones, a history project run by public broadcaster WETA, farmers ferried doctors, nurses, and emergency vehicles to and from hospitals across the area for as long as the storm lasted. Farmers reportedly gave newly elected Senator John Warner a ride to the Capitol when nothing else could get through.

The shift in attitude was immediate. A cab driver who had been fed up with the tractor protest days earlier told a reporter he now believed the farmers "need a break."

The Goodwill Only Went So Far

Public sympathy did not translate into a lasting welcome. On February 23, just days after the blizzard, DC's police chief banned future Tractorcades, citing a lack of "responsible leadership" among the group. The farmers packed up and left the Mall by the start of March, and a group of Maryland farmers stayed behind long enough to reseed the grass their tractors had torn up.

The farm policy fight that brought the Tractorcade to Washington in the first place mostly fizzled. But for one snowbound week in February 1979, the machines Washington had tried to shut out were the reason parts of the city kept running at all.