Sunday, April 4, 2010

Early Adrian

Way back when, Adrian was an important junction point between the Great Northern mainline and the Northern Pacific Central Washington branch/Connell Northern branch. The NP crossed the GN on a large wooden trestle, but there was an interchange track to the east.

While all of this is now gone, here is a map that helps you see what once was at Adrian. Note the map has a 1910 date and says Douglas County, even though Adrian became part of Grant County in 1909.



You can see this was a busy place back then. What is left today? The two tracks coming in from the left, and then the two tracks just north of them. There is no crossover between the main and siding to the east of the depot. Nor is there a depot, or any other structure. This map does not show the wye track that used to be there, on the southwest side of the map. You can visit Adrian today and see the turntable pit, and the water tank footings, plus some large pieces of concrete.

Center point of the turntable pit:

Where the water tower once stood:

Location of interchange track:

Large bridge concrete footings with people in Crab Creek for perspective:


 Small bridge location over Crab Creek along interchange track:

Special thanks to Aaron Schwarz for the map.

1 comment:

The Old So-and-So from Seattle said...

DB- Great stuff! Amazing to see how well the scrub of the dry side reveals what was there. The State Archives at Olympia have a circa World War One shot of Adrian showing the massive trestle at the site. Good work from AS on that plat -- neat stuff. Any chance you've had an opportunity to look into the local county assessor's office for further plats? Any shots of the depot? (Will have to look through the RVN database to see if he ever got through there on the ground.) 73 JP3