actually, I see what happened. When I fixed the _routes file, then went back to the initial "Deploy a site from your account > Git". When it would try the initial deployment, and fail. I never left this screen (because it would give a pop-up warning to not leave with incomplete deployment.). I would click the "retry". I now see it kept retrying the same commit version, instead of the newest one. The build that was also failing, no longer is failing because it auto deployed to the fixed version. This is what caused my confusion. https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/framework-guides/deploy-a-svelte-site/#sveltekit-cloudflare-configuration Showed the config to be

adapter: adapter(),

I found this link with the fix https://kit.svelte.dev/docs/adapter-cloudflare#usage

adapter: adapter({
            // See below for an explanation of these options
            routes: {
                include: ['/api/*'],
                exclude: []
            }
        })

Hope this helps others.