Note that this well is only 7 feet deep!
This site features daily historical railroad posts from the Big Bend/Columbia Plateau region of Washington state. As a personal site, this is my online filing cabinet of interesting things I've come across about railroading in the area. Thanks for stopping by!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
NP Well in Coulee City
1890 NP well located next to the much much newer sewer ponds on the south side of Coulee City. In the little dip below the slanted name "Pinto Ridge Road NE" between the dark and light green ponds.
Note that this well is only 7 feet deep!
Note that this well is only 7 feet deep!
Sunday, June 21, 2009
U&I Sugar at Scalley
In seeking information for an upcoming Grant County Centennial article (1949-1959), I came across this tidbit from the HistoryLink.org website:
"U&I awarded the $7 million construction contract to J. W. Hardison of Yakima. A secondary contract was awarded to A. A. Durand and Son of Walla Walla to drill a well. U&I built several homes in Moses Lake for key personnel. The Northern Pacific railroad built a spur to the plant from its Wheeler siding. The Milwaukee Railroad also extended a spur line to the plant. Paul Scalley was appointed the local manager of U&I."
See the full article here.
The NP named its location at U&I “Scalley.” In the NP list of Officers, Agents, and Stations, Scalley was located at Wheeler, with no other differentiations. There is about 1 mile difference, as the crow flies, between Wheeler and Scalley.
The Milwaukee Road built its spur from its station at Seiler on the Moses Lake branch.
What is interesting to note is that today the physical location of Scalley, at the long abandoned U&I Sugar plant, is the connection between what is left of the old NP Connell Northern branch (from Connell to Wheeler, and abandoned from Wheeler to Adrian), and the remnant of the Milwaukee Moses Lake branch. The Milwaukee is gone between Warden and Seiler, and is connected to the outside world via Scalley and the NP connection. All is now operated by the CBRW.
"U&I awarded the $7 million construction contract to J. W. Hardison of Yakima. A secondary contract was awarded to A. A. Durand and Son of Walla Walla to drill a well. U&I built several homes in Moses Lake for key personnel. The Northern Pacific railroad built a spur to the plant from its Wheeler siding. The Milwaukee Railroad also extended a spur line to the plant. Paul Scalley was appointed the local manager of U&I."
See the full article here.
The NP named its location at U&I “Scalley.” In the NP list of Officers, Agents, and Stations, Scalley was located at Wheeler, with no other differentiations. There is about 1 mile difference, as the crow flies, between Wheeler and Scalley.
The Milwaukee Road built its spur from its station at Seiler on the Moses Lake branch.
What is interesting to note is that today the physical location of Scalley, at the long abandoned U&I Sugar plant, is the connection between what is left of the old NP Connell Northern branch (from Connell to Wheeler, and abandoned from Wheeler to Adrian), and the remnant of the Milwaukee Moses Lake branch. The Milwaukee is gone between Warden and Seiler, and is connected to the outside world via Scalley and the NP connection. All is now operated by the CBRW.
Friday, June 5, 2009
1940 US Construction Railroad Photo
This image from 1940 looks northward towards Steamboat Rock. You can make out the railroad right-of-way crossing the lake, also seen here. You can make out the old highway to the right of the railroad. The current highway, SR155, is a lot closer to the cliffs on the right, and then cuts through the basalt cliff just to the right of the same lake the railroad crosses. This section of highway is locally called the "Million Dollar Mile" as that is about what is cost for this section of highway to be built before this whole area was flooded to become the Equalizing Reservoir now called Banks Lake.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Big Shovel Busy On Coulee Road
From the “Spokane Chronicle.”
August 7, 1934
On a steep rocky cliff some 400 feet above the stretch of dark green, which is the Columbia River, a steam shovel can be seen daily throwing down big boulders over the edge of the precipice.
The machine is part of the equipment used by Crick & Kuney on the project of building the joint highway and rail entrance from the mouth of the coulee to the dam site.
The big dynamite blast of 18,000 pounds was set off last weekend, but because of the excitement caused by the president’s visit here on Saturday it practically aroused no excitement here.
August 7, 1934
On a steep rocky cliff some 400 feet above the stretch of dark green, which is the Columbia River, a steam shovel can be seen daily throwing down big boulders over the edge of the precipice.
The machine is part of the equipment used by Crick & Kuney on the project of building the joint highway and rail entrance from the mouth of the coulee to the dam site.
The big dynamite blast of 18,000 pounds was set off last weekend, but because of the excitement caused by the president’s visit here on Saturday it practically aroused no excitement here.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Railroads of Grant County 1929-1939
In February of 1929, Grant County entered its third decade with a sense of defeat. Discouragement over the failing economy, the weariness from the efforts expended during World War I, the devastation of the drought that drove settlers from the searing desert, and the decline of the railroads from their former state of glory all contributed to the darkening hope of carving out a worthwhile living from the Columbia Basin.
Changes were evident everywhere. Farms were now federally subsidized, but there were fewer of them and more restrictions and loopholes made the money harder to obtain. Dust still rolled across the sagebrush fields, making the Basin nearly uninhabitable. Business was still slow; Grant County was in all practicality a frontier town when it came to the latest in modern advances. The stock market was showing signs of collapse, and though most local people had little to do with such things, the shock waves rippled across the country to this meager corner of the world. Banks, schools, rural post offices, businesses and farms began to fail, close and disappear.
Railroads were no longer the primary mode of transportation for either freight or personal travel. The government had extensive control over rail traffic through the Interstate Commerce Commission, which began to have a negative effect on growth in the industry. The last major rail construction project was completed in 1931, connecting Klamath Falls, Oregon, 203 miles to Keddie, California, along the Great Northern/Western Pacific line. No one believed it was a profitable venture anymore.
Locally, there was very little rail activity other than the day-to-day movement of goods, mostly, from one regional center to the next. Larger operations, once successful in a thriving industry, now downgraded or recycled instead of rebuilding. The depot at Trinidad burned down in 1931, to be replaced by the original 1892 structure from Rock Island. The Krupp depot was retired and sold in 1936, and replaced a year later with a small, 16’x24’ shelter/shed-style depot. The Great Northern line changed its endpoints for railway post office service, but the only local indication of that was the new town name on the postage cancellation stamp appearing on mail delivered to Grant County.
Rumors and outlandish ideas began to swirl around the region back in the first decade of the county’s history about bringing irrigation waters to the dry, desert plateau. A quiet move by the county commissioners to investigate these ideas was leaked to the press in 1918, fueling a heated debate spreading from Wenatchee to Spokane. Finally, in the midst of a deepening recession and faltering hope came a reason for Basin settlers to rejoice: a large dam for irrigation was to be built at the northern end of the Grand Coulee, bringing jobs, business and growth in every area of Grant County.
Two opposing parties eventually emerged, one supporting the irrigation dam at the Grand Coulee site, the other proposing a gravity-fed canal system stemming from the Pond Oreille River. Besides the study initiated by the Grant County Commissioners, the Northern Pacific (NP) conducted a railroad line survey up through the floor of the Grand Coulee to determine the most feasible route from Coulee City to the proposed Grand Coulee dam site, and the Army Corps of Engineers began a three-year survey of the comparative feasibility of the two debated irrigation systems. Major John Butler of the Corps finished first, and published his findings in favor of the Grand Coulee option, sometime in the year after Black Thursday, 1929. President Herbert Hoover disagreed, arguing that the cost was too high and that it would only make worse the surplus of farms after the war.
This all changed as the next presidential election loomed large in the fall of 1931. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made a campaign promise to build the country’s “next great hydro-electric development” at Grand Coulee. His devotion to the new Keynesian economics of the time included a belief that large projects such as the Grand Coulee Dam would create large federal expenditures and thus promote economic growth. Under this dramatic attitude change, he immediately included the dam project in his Public Works Administration program upon his election.
Nationally, one in four workers seeking jobs was unable to find employment, despite the fact that the first recessionary period of the Great Depression had ended in March of 1933. FDR wasn’t convinced yet that the country was out of the woods. He called a bank holiday in March for one week to save money, and when he met with the supporters of the Grand Coulee Dam the next month, he pressured them to construct a smaller dam that could be expanded upon later, in hopes of reducing the $400 million price tag of the high dam option. Reluctantly going ahead with his plan, the Bureau of Reclamation began signing contracts with both the state and contractors, leading to the groundbreaking ceremony for the new “low dam” on July 16, 1933.
In September, the NP finished their survey of the Grand Coulee for the purpose of constructing a railroad line from Coulee City’s Odair junction to the dam site 28.5 miles to the north. Two months later, they posted a public notice petitioning the ICC to build the line. Two problems arose. First, the NP was a land-grant railroad, and under its contract with the federal government, the cost of freight shipped along its line for government purposes was subject to a 50% price reduction; this would have cost the company $1.5 million in revenues. Also, trucking companies insisted that the government open the project to bids, rather than rely solely on rail service as they had intended.
The NP had also made three stipulations in its petition to the ICC. It stated that it would not build the line if it could not be proven that the dam would be built, which the ICC held as a foregone conclusion. The second demanded all the rail commerce business generated by the dam; in this case, they were told it was their responsibility to obtain such business by their own effort. Lastly, the NP wanted prior permission to abandon the line upon completion of the dam. The ICC understood that the current construction was for a low dam with the option of increasing the height to 375’ at a later date; the line would be necessary in the near future if this remained the plan, and so the NP would be required to apply for that option when this was decided.
In its decisions, the ICC also referenced the recent onset of construction at Boulder Dam at Colorado, stating that rail service contracts had been established before work began and so it would be here. The estimate for the construction of the rail line was $750,000, and the media implied that the speed at which Boulder’s dam was built was to be met here as well.
The Interior Department and the Bureau of Reclamation discussed early on whether the main contractor for the dam would also build the line, but ultimately decided that the rail project would be government-funded. The contractor would be responsible to provide and fund any items to be taken away from the site at the completion of the dam; the government would purchase the rest. This was due to concerns over whether a contractor could procure the funding in a reasonable timeframe to complete the project in the short window proposed.
This intention, of course, did not remain the case. On the day that bids for the rail project were accepted on May 18, 1934, it was discovered that the NP had miscalculated the estimate of the amount of rock tonnage to be removed along the proposed right-of-way. The twelve bidders endured a half-day postponement while their bids were reevaluated under the new estimate.
Out of these firms mostly from Seattle or Spokane, only one had an office relatively near the site. David H. Ryan, a California contractor with an office in Almira, won the right to use the NP survey to build the government railroad from Odair, the NP siding at Coulee City, to the head of the Grand Coulee. Ryan had won the bid for the excavation of the foundation of the dam, but had experienced serious conflicts over his contract; it took three months to complete federal investigations and approve the contract for the construction of the railroad.
As the Spokane Chronicle reported on July 18, 1934, “Grading will begin immediately at the Odair, or south, end of the railroad, with at least 100 men, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” Crews finally began moving his operations from his headquarters in Grand Coulee to Odair in August, where his daughter Helena dug the first shovelful of earth from the coulee floor in preparation for the railbed on the eighth of that month. As the Chronicle reported on April 19, 1934, “The whistle of locomotives will be heard in the Grand coulee for the first time in history.”
James Crick and Max J. Kuney of Spokane won the bid on June 18, 1934, to construct the portion of the MWAK company line from just east of the dam site down the hillside to the excavation site. This included a highway as well, and paving of the engineers’ model townsite as well; this townsite is now the west half of the city of Coulee Dam.
Soon Grant County was buzzing with preparations for a planned visit to the dam site by President Roosevelt, and the railroad was to be his primary means of reaching the remote location in the northern Columbia Basin. Originally, FDR was to travel by train to Soap Lake, and then be carried to Grand Coulee by a limousine from the Seattle Police Department.
On July 31, 1934, the Chronicle reported the following:
Colonel E.V. Starling, head of the White House secret service in charge of the president’s trip, said in Spokane last Saturday he had recommended the change, after he discovered the platform at the Soap Lake station is only 150 feet long.
To avoid making most of the passengers on the train detrain in the sagebrush, the schedule has been revised, with the approval of Marvin McIntyre, the president’s secretary in Washington.
What the article did not report was the cause for the concern. Few people in the country knew that our president was handicapped. Had the train stopped in Soap Lake at the proper location for FDR’s wheelchair to be lowered onto the small platform, the other passengers would have been left to step onto gravel and sagebrush far from the depot. The Ephrata platform extended the entire length of the train, and would not cause undue notice of the president’s condition.
Five days later, the official train reached Spokane from Portland and Bonneville at 1 a.m., where large crowds were expected to greet him despite the early hour and predicted rainshowers. Once the train was moved to the Great Northern line, it was to travel directly to Ephrata, where more large crowds were to await a glimpse of the president. At nine in the morning, FDR left his train for the limousine. According to the Chronicle, he viewed “a display of mid-Columbia products” (“Columbia Basin irrigated farm products’, as in said in an earlier release) (Spokesman called it a “Grange exhibit”, and said he visited ML too) before leaving town. The party took the North Central Highway (part of today’s Highway 28) five miles to Soap Lake, then up over High Hill Road and Pinto Ridge to Coulee City. All told, it was a journey of 55 miles over what was then called a comfortable ride over “oiled roads.” While on this journey, all roads leading to the dam site were closed to general travel, ostensibly for security purposes.
At the site of the dam, FDR inspected the dam site with Bureau officials, then spoke shortly after noon to an audience of roughly 20,000 at the “Green Bowl,” a natural amphitheater conveniently located beside the construction site. While he was away, his train was backed up all the way to the last vestiges of the roundhouse at Wilson Creek, where it was turned around and again backed down the track to Soap Lake. The president boarded there and whisked away to arrive back in Spokane by 6 p.m.
Originally, officials had expected much more work to be completed by the president’s visit than FDR actually witnessed. The roughly 200-foot-long tunnel through the admittedly hard granite was still not completed in May of the next year, according to the Chronicle; experienced drillers claimed that the constant need to resharpen their tools caused very slow progress, worse than they had ever faced. After completing the drilling process, the tunnel was abandoned altogether.
This happened because the rail bridge farther down the grade, on which general traffic flowed through October of 1935, was never used for rail traffic; by the time repairs had been made due to several slides and slippages damaging the structure, there was little need for rail service to the east side of the river. Officials stated the bridge would not be capable of sustaining the weight of the tracks and the loads carried on them.
The steel rails for the project weren’t laid according to plan, either. The first rail was laid in September of 1934, and didn’t reach Grand Coulee until December, finally bringing the company and government roads together, an accomplishment worthy of celebration.
Dignitaries came from across the country to drive in the “golden spike” commemorating the joining of Ryan’s supply line to Crick and Kuneys’ construction spur. On Saturday, December 8, 1934, Governor Clarence Martin, United Stated Senator C. C. Dill, Contractor David Ryan, Cheney Cowles of the Spokane Chronicle, and others gathered at Grand Coulee Center. After a large crane dropped the last piece of rail into place, the dignitaries tapped the golden spike into place.
Behind these men stood the “Queen of the Columbia,” Miss Lou Turner of Harrington. As the Spokane Chronicle reported it earlier that fall, “The most beautiful of all the girls of the Columbia basin area will be chosen to preside over the driving of the golden spike in the new government railway, leading from Coulee City to the dam site. The Chronicle, at the request of the Coulee dam post of the American legion, will undertake to find the queen of youth and beauty and to crown her on the day of the completion of the railroad.” One of Miss Turner’s other official honors was to pull the throttle on the old logging locomotive – a favorite of Mr. Ryan – which would soon run up and down the hillside beside the dam site.
Mr. Ryan was also crowned “King of the Rails,” and the day’s events included a reception for the two royalty, speeches, a banquet, and a dance hosted by the American Legion.
At last closing out a busy 1934, MWAK announced on December 20 that the new government railroad would not offer passenger service to and from the dam, dispelling rampant rumors to the contrary.
In 1935, construction of the railroad continued. Despite the golden spike ceremony, ties still lay beside the tracks and ballast hadn’t been placed; Governor Martin had commented on this, saying he intended to return “when the railroad looks more like a railroad,” according to the Chronicle. A portion of the railroad was relocated in the spring because of continued sliding in the area; rail was expected to finally be laid by early May, allowing the first locomotive to pass along the line by the end of June.
Again, all estimates failed, and rail service didn’t begin until July. On the 27th, Governor Clarence Martin acted as engineer for the special train from Grand Coulee to Coulee City, christening the new line at long last.
In April of 1935, the Supreme Court ruled against FDR’s administration, saying that the construction of Parker Dam in Arizona and others like it had been built without the required authorization of Congress. The president began to push legislation which would finally give legitimacy to the more than twenty dams already under construction around the country that had been initiated by his administration. After a large controversy over the unfathomable Grand Coulee Dam project, Congress forwarded the amended Rivers and Harbors Bill to the president, who signed it into law on August 30, 1935. Meanwhile, the month of June saw the order from the Secretary of the Interior to construct the base for the high dam, instead of the in-progress low one.
With excitement building over the okay to construct the dam originally chosen by Grant County pioneers, materials began to pour into Grand Coulee. November 1, 1935 brought the first delivery of cement by rail up the Grand Coulee. Five cars came from the Lehigh Portland Cement Company’s Metaline Falls plant, and three from other companies on the coast. It was stored in large silos at the west end of the construction site until it could be mixed in the concrete mix plants at the time of pouring into forms. Each of these silos held 40,000 barrels or 160 carloads of 250 barrels each, according to the Chronicle. As the demand for cement picked up, the intention was to run two cement trains to the dam site a day; each week, approximately six cars came from Metaline Falls, three from the Irvin plant of Spokane Portland Cement, and 30 from the west coast plants.
An article in October in the Spokesman Review had this to say about the cement and supply operations involving rail traffic at the dam site:
With 50 or so cars of materials and equipment arriving daily at the dam, once concrete pouring is well started, provision for handling much of that heavy work was necessary and a huge gantry crane has been set up at the railroad yards at Coulee Dam City, a mile up the coulee. There the trains will be sidetracked and unloaded and the material sent down the grade to the dam site. Eventually there will be four of the big cranes in operation. They are nearly 20 feet high and straddle the rails. Flat cars are pushed under the cranes, which pick up the materials and unload them. The cranes are mounted on wheels to permit shifting from place to place. Nine cars, loaded with 34 mammoth concrete buckets, are standing in the yards, waiting for the day when they will be put into service carrying the mixture from the mixing plants to the waiting forms. The railroad yard is becoming one of the busy spots of the area, with the erection for small checking offices, sheds and several lines of cars on sidings.
Governor Martin again visited the site on December 6, 1935 – another of many visits he would make to the largest project occurring in his jurisdiction. He made the first official concrete pour of four cubic-yards; though over a week earlier, on Thanksgiving, officials had poured nearly 400 times that amount as a test pour.
Rail was used in multiple areas beyond the supply line from Odair. The construction trestles included the many tracks used by small steam locomotives which shuffled the large vats of concrete between the plants and the pour locations. The switchbacks descending the hill to the base of the dam, which outlasted the tunnel and bridge counterparts, were used, as well as a skip system, to bring rail cars down to the level of construction.
For the next several years, not much changed in day-to-day rail operations. A typical locomotive ran daily trips between Odair and Grand Coulee, where it met with the steam-powered logging engine. This Shay locomotive backed down a two-mile, 5% grade, at eight to ten miles per hour, carrying 25 cement cars, each of which held 72,000 pounds of cement. An official MWAK newsletter in May of 1936 stated that, in 21 months of construction at the Grand Coulee Dam, the railroad had only been in operation eight months, and yet had carried 55% of the total tonnage of supplies for the project.
During the remaining three years of this decade of Grant County’s history, concrete pours were halted by freezes, landslides, and water cresting over the concrete forms and coffer dams. Once construction resumed, several records for the amount of concrete placed were achieved each summer.
In the middle of the second recession of the Great Depression, the contract for the second phase of dam construction was awarded on January 28, 1938, to Interior Construction, soon to be renamed Consolidated Builders Inc. (CBI) to avoid confusion with the Department of the Interior. CBI’s first projects, accomplished in the spring on 1938, were to move the west concrete plant to join with the east plant, to build a new railroad bridge, and to replace the lower MWAK construction trestle with a new, higher trestle to facilitate the construction of the taller dam.
In relation to the current traffic bridge below the dam, the MWAK rail bridge was to the north, and on a more level plane; it was roughly half a mile to the north of the dam. The location of the two construction trestles in question is now ensconced within the perimeter of the dam; MWAK’s was lower, CBI’s was higher and more southerly.
Unfortunately, CBI put off hiring back the majority of workers until the end of the year, causing economic hardship to many workers and their families who had moved to the area; the average worker earned only $0.80 an hour, and in dangerous conditions. On the other hand, railroad workers – when cement was in demand and concrete was being poured – were paid fairly well. Brakemen and firemen were paid $0.90 an hour, conductors one dollar, and locomotive engineers $1.35 an hour; these men would have still had jobs when concrete works shut down because they brought in many different supplies used in construction.
The Grand Coulee Dam project had brought a level of prosperity back to the Basin. A gas station owner in Coulee City was reported as saying that he saw business jump to a point where he was making more profit in a month than he previously had in a year. Thousands of men who couldn’t find jobs elsewhere in the country rode the rails to reach this barren desert, hoping to work on the massive dam and its railroad.
The next decade saw not only a continuation of these hopes, but the completion of the dam, the second world war, and the beginning of the long-awaited irrigation project that would breathe new life into Grant County and the Columbia Basin.
Changes were evident everywhere. Farms were now federally subsidized, but there were fewer of them and more restrictions and loopholes made the money harder to obtain. Dust still rolled across the sagebrush fields, making the Basin nearly uninhabitable. Business was still slow; Grant County was in all practicality a frontier town when it came to the latest in modern advances. The stock market was showing signs of collapse, and though most local people had little to do with such things, the shock waves rippled across the country to this meager corner of the world. Banks, schools, rural post offices, businesses and farms began to fail, close and disappear.
Railroads were no longer the primary mode of transportation for either freight or personal travel. The government had extensive control over rail traffic through the Interstate Commerce Commission, which began to have a negative effect on growth in the industry. The last major rail construction project was completed in 1931, connecting Klamath Falls, Oregon, 203 miles to Keddie, California, along the Great Northern/Western Pacific line. No one believed it was a profitable venture anymore.
Locally, there was very little rail activity other than the day-to-day movement of goods, mostly, from one regional center to the next. Larger operations, once successful in a thriving industry, now downgraded or recycled instead of rebuilding. The depot at Trinidad burned down in 1931, to be replaced by the original 1892 structure from Rock Island. The Krupp depot was retired and sold in 1936, and replaced a year later with a small, 16’x24’ shelter/shed-style depot. The Great Northern line changed its endpoints for railway post office service, but the only local indication of that was the new town name on the postage cancellation stamp appearing on mail delivered to Grant County.
Rumors and outlandish ideas began to swirl around the region back in the first decade of the county’s history about bringing irrigation waters to the dry, desert plateau. A quiet move by the county commissioners to investigate these ideas was leaked to the press in 1918, fueling a heated debate spreading from Wenatchee to Spokane. Finally, in the midst of a deepening recession and faltering hope came a reason for Basin settlers to rejoice: a large dam for irrigation was to be built at the northern end of the Grand Coulee, bringing jobs, business and growth in every area of Grant County.
Two opposing parties eventually emerged, one supporting the irrigation dam at the Grand Coulee site, the other proposing a gravity-fed canal system stemming from the Pond Oreille River. Besides the study initiated by the Grant County Commissioners, the Northern Pacific (NP) conducted a railroad line survey up through the floor of the Grand Coulee to determine the most feasible route from Coulee City to the proposed Grand Coulee dam site, and the Army Corps of Engineers began a three-year survey of the comparative feasibility of the two debated irrigation systems. Major John Butler of the Corps finished first, and published his findings in favor of the Grand Coulee option, sometime in the year after Black Thursday, 1929. President Herbert Hoover disagreed, arguing that the cost was too high and that it would only make worse the surplus of farms after the war.
This all changed as the next presidential election loomed large in the fall of 1931. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made a campaign promise to build the country’s “next great hydro-electric development” at Grand Coulee. His devotion to the new Keynesian economics of the time included a belief that large projects such as the Grand Coulee Dam would create large federal expenditures and thus promote economic growth. Under this dramatic attitude change, he immediately included the dam project in his Public Works Administration program upon his election.
Nationally, one in four workers seeking jobs was unable to find employment, despite the fact that the first recessionary period of the Great Depression had ended in March of 1933. FDR wasn’t convinced yet that the country was out of the woods. He called a bank holiday in March for one week to save money, and when he met with the supporters of the Grand Coulee Dam the next month, he pressured them to construct a smaller dam that could be expanded upon later, in hopes of reducing the $400 million price tag of the high dam option. Reluctantly going ahead with his plan, the Bureau of Reclamation began signing contracts with both the state and contractors, leading to the groundbreaking ceremony for the new “low dam” on July 16, 1933.
In September, the NP finished their survey of the Grand Coulee for the purpose of constructing a railroad line from Coulee City’s Odair junction to the dam site 28.5 miles to the north. Two months later, they posted a public notice petitioning the ICC to build the line. Two problems arose. First, the NP was a land-grant railroad, and under its contract with the federal government, the cost of freight shipped along its line for government purposes was subject to a 50% price reduction; this would have cost the company $1.5 million in revenues. Also, trucking companies insisted that the government open the project to bids, rather than rely solely on rail service as they had intended.
The NP had also made three stipulations in its petition to the ICC. It stated that it would not build the line if it could not be proven that the dam would be built, which the ICC held as a foregone conclusion. The second demanded all the rail commerce business generated by the dam; in this case, they were told it was their responsibility to obtain such business by their own effort. Lastly, the NP wanted prior permission to abandon the line upon completion of the dam. The ICC understood that the current construction was for a low dam with the option of increasing the height to 375’ at a later date; the line would be necessary in the near future if this remained the plan, and so the NP would be required to apply for that option when this was decided.
In its decisions, the ICC also referenced the recent onset of construction at Boulder Dam at Colorado, stating that rail service contracts had been established before work began and so it would be here. The estimate for the construction of the rail line was $750,000, and the media implied that the speed at which Boulder’s dam was built was to be met here as well.
The Interior Department and the Bureau of Reclamation discussed early on whether the main contractor for the dam would also build the line, but ultimately decided that the rail project would be government-funded. The contractor would be responsible to provide and fund any items to be taken away from the site at the completion of the dam; the government would purchase the rest. This was due to concerns over whether a contractor could procure the funding in a reasonable timeframe to complete the project in the short window proposed.
This intention, of course, did not remain the case. On the day that bids for the rail project were accepted on May 18, 1934, it was discovered that the NP had miscalculated the estimate of the amount of rock tonnage to be removed along the proposed right-of-way. The twelve bidders endured a half-day postponement while their bids were reevaluated under the new estimate.
Out of these firms mostly from Seattle or Spokane, only one had an office relatively near the site. David H. Ryan, a California contractor with an office in Almira, won the right to use the NP survey to build the government railroad from Odair, the NP siding at Coulee City, to the head of the Grand Coulee. Ryan had won the bid for the excavation of the foundation of the dam, but had experienced serious conflicts over his contract; it took three months to complete federal investigations and approve the contract for the construction of the railroad.
As the Spokane Chronicle reported on July 18, 1934, “Grading will begin immediately at the Odair, or south, end of the railroad, with at least 100 men, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” Crews finally began moving his operations from his headquarters in Grand Coulee to Odair in August, where his daughter Helena dug the first shovelful of earth from the coulee floor in preparation for the railbed on the eighth of that month. As the Chronicle reported on April 19, 1934, “The whistle of locomotives will be heard in the Grand coulee for the first time in history.”
James Crick and Max J. Kuney of Spokane won the bid on June 18, 1934, to construct the portion of the MWAK company line from just east of the dam site down the hillside to the excavation site. This included a highway as well, and paving of the engineers’ model townsite as well; this townsite is now the west half of the city of Coulee Dam.
Soon Grant County was buzzing with preparations for a planned visit to the dam site by President Roosevelt, and the railroad was to be his primary means of reaching the remote location in the northern Columbia Basin. Originally, FDR was to travel by train to Soap Lake, and then be carried to Grand Coulee by a limousine from the Seattle Police Department.
On July 31, 1934, the Chronicle reported the following:
Colonel E.V. Starling, head of the White House secret service in charge of the president’s trip, said in Spokane last Saturday he had recommended the change, after he discovered the platform at the Soap Lake station is only 150 feet long.
To avoid making most of the passengers on the train detrain in the sagebrush, the schedule has been revised, with the approval of Marvin McIntyre, the president’s secretary in Washington.
What the article did not report was the cause for the concern. Few people in the country knew that our president was handicapped. Had the train stopped in Soap Lake at the proper location for FDR’s wheelchair to be lowered onto the small platform, the other passengers would have been left to step onto gravel and sagebrush far from the depot. The Ephrata platform extended the entire length of the train, and would not cause undue notice of the president’s condition.
Five days later, the official train reached Spokane from Portland and Bonneville at 1 a.m., where large crowds were expected to greet him despite the early hour and predicted rainshowers. Once the train was moved to the Great Northern line, it was to travel directly to Ephrata, where more large crowds were to await a glimpse of the president. At nine in the morning, FDR left his train for the limousine. According to the Chronicle, he viewed “a display of mid-Columbia products” (“Columbia Basin irrigated farm products’, as in said in an earlier release) (Spokesman called it a “Grange exhibit”, and said he visited ML too) before leaving town. The party took the North Central Highway (part of today’s Highway 28) five miles to Soap Lake, then up over High Hill Road and Pinto Ridge to Coulee City. All told, it was a journey of 55 miles over what was then called a comfortable ride over “oiled roads.” While on this journey, all roads leading to the dam site were closed to general travel, ostensibly for security purposes.
At the site of the dam, FDR inspected the dam site with Bureau officials, then spoke shortly after noon to an audience of roughly 20,000 at the “Green Bowl,” a natural amphitheater conveniently located beside the construction site. While he was away, his train was backed up all the way to the last vestiges of the roundhouse at Wilson Creek, where it was turned around and again backed down the track to Soap Lake. The president boarded there and whisked away to arrive back in Spokane by 6 p.m.
Originally, officials had expected much more work to be completed by the president’s visit than FDR actually witnessed. The roughly 200-foot-long tunnel through the admittedly hard granite was still not completed in May of the next year, according to the Chronicle; experienced drillers claimed that the constant need to resharpen their tools caused very slow progress, worse than they had ever faced. After completing the drilling process, the tunnel was abandoned altogether.
This happened because the rail bridge farther down the grade, on which general traffic flowed through October of 1935, was never used for rail traffic; by the time repairs had been made due to several slides and slippages damaging the structure, there was little need for rail service to the east side of the river. Officials stated the bridge would not be capable of sustaining the weight of the tracks and the loads carried on them.
The steel rails for the project weren’t laid according to plan, either. The first rail was laid in September of 1934, and didn’t reach Grand Coulee until December, finally bringing the company and government roads together, an accomplishment worthy of celebration.
Dignitaries came from across the country to drive in the “golden spike” commemorating the joining of Ryan’s supply line to Crick and Kuneys’ construction spur. On Saturday, December 8, 1934, Governor Clarence Martin, United Stated Senator C. C. Dill, Contractor David Ryan, Cheney Cowles of the Spokane Chronicle, and others gathered at Grand Coulee Center. After a large crane dropped the last piece of rail into place, the dignitaries tapped the golden spike into place.
Behind these men stood the “Queen of the Columbia,” Miss Lou Turner of Harrington. As the Spokane Chronicle reported it earlier that fall, “The most beautiful of all the girls of the Columbia basin area will be chosen to preside over the driving of the golden spike in the new government railway, leading from Coulee City to the dam site. The Chronicle, at the request of the Coulee dam post of the American legion, will undertake to find the queen of youth and beauty and to crown her on the day of the completion of the railroad.” One of Miss Turner’s other official honors was to pull the throttle on the old logging locomotive – a favorite of Mr. Ryan – which would soon run up and down the hillside beside the dam site.
Mr. Ryan was also crowned “King of the Rails,” and the day’s events included a reception for the two royalty, speeches, a banquet, and a dance hosted by the American Legion.
At last closing out a busy 1934, MWAK announced on December 20 that the new government railroad would not offer passenger service to and from the dam, dispelling rampant rumors to the contrary.
In 1935, construction of the railroad continued. Despite the golden spike ceremony, ties still lay beside the tracks and ballast hadn’t been placed; Governor Martin had commented on this, saying he intended to return “when the railroad looks more like a railroad,” according to the Chronicle. A portion of the railroad was relocated in the spring because of continued sliding in the area; rail was expected to finally be laid by early May, allowing the first locomotive to pass along the line by the end of June.
Again, all estimates failed, and rail service didn’t begin until July. On the 27th, Governor Clarence Martin acted as engineer for the special train from Grand Coulee to Coulee City, christening the new line at long last.
In April of 1935, the Supreme Court ruled against FDR’s administration, saying that the construction of Parker Dam in Arizona and others like it had been built without the required authorization of Congress. The president began to push legislation which would finally give legitimacy to the more than twenty dams already under construction around the country that had been initiated by his administration. After a large controversy over the unfathomable Grand Coulee Dam project, Congress forwarded the amended Rivers and Harbors Bill to the president, who signed it into law on August 30, 1935. Meanwhile, the month of June saw the order from the Secretary of the Interior to construct the base for the high dam, instead of the in-progress low one.
With excitement building over the okay to construct the dam originally chosen by Grant County pioneers, materials began to pour into Grand Coulee. November 1, 1935 brought the first delivery of cement by rail up the Grand Coulee. Five cars came from the Lehigh Portland Cement Company’s Metaline Falls plant, and three from other companies on the coast. It was stored in large silos at the west end of the construction site until it could be mixed in the concrete mix plants at the time of pouring into forms. Each of these silos held 40,000 barrels or 160 carloads of 250 barrels each, according to the Chronicle. As the demand for cement picked up, the intention was to run two cement trains to the dam site a day; each week, approximately six cars came from Metaline Falls, three from the Irvin plant of Spokane Portland Cement, and 30 from the west coast plants.
An article in October in the Spokesman Review had this to say about the cement and supply operations involving rail traffic at the dam site:
With 50 or so cars of materials and equipment arriving daily at the dam, once concrete pouring is well started, provision for handling much of that heavy work was necessary and a huge gantry crane has been set up at the railroad yards at Coulee Dam City, a mile up the coulee. There the trains will be sidetracked and unloaded and the material sent down the grade to the dam site. Eventually there will be four of the big cranes in operation. They are nearly 20 feet high and straddle the rails. Flat cars are pushed under the cranes, which pick up the materials and unload them. The cranes are mounted on wheels to permit shifting from place to place. Nine cars, loaded with 34 mammoth concrete buckets, are standing in the yards, waiting for the day when they will be put into service carrying the mixture from the mixing plants to the waiting forms. The railroad yard is becoming one of the busy spots of the area, with the erection for small checking offices, sheds and several lines of cars on sidings.
Governor Martin again visited the site on December 6, 1935 – another of many visits he would make to the largest project occurring in his jurisdiction. He made the first official concrete pour of four cubic-yards; though over a week earlier, on Thanksgiving, officials had poured nearly 400 times that amount as a test pour.
Rail was used in multiple areas beyond the supply line from Odair. The construction trestles included the many tracks used by small steam locomotives which shuffled the large vats of concrete between the plants and the pour locations. The switchbacks descending the hill to the base of the dam, which outlasted the tunnel and bridge counterparts, were used, as well as a skip system, to bring rail cars down to the level of construction.
For the next several years, not much changed in day-to-day rail operations. A typical locomotive ran daily trips between Odair and Grand Coulee, where it met with the steam-powered logging engine. This Shay locomotive backed down a two-mile, 5% grade, at eight to ten miles per hour, carrying 25 cement cars, each of which held 72,000 pounds of cement. An official MWAK newsletter in May of 1936 stated that, in 21 months of construction at the Grand Coulee Dam, the railroad had only been in operation eight months, and yet had carried 55% of the total tonnage of supplies for the project.
During the remaining three years of this decade of Grant County’s history, concrete pours were halted by freezes, landslides, and water cresting over the concrete forms and coffer dams. Once construction resumed, several records for the amount of concrete placed were achieved each summer.
In the middle of the second recession of the Great Depression, the contract for the second phase of dam construction was awarded on January 28, 1938, to Interior Construction, soon to be renamed Consolidated Builders Inc. (CBI) to avoid confusion with the Department of the Interior. CBI’s first projects, accomplished in the spring on 1938, were to move the west concrete plant to join with the east plant, to build a new railroad bridge, and to replace the lower MWAK construction trestle with a new, higher trestle to facilitate the construction of the taller dam.
In relation to the current traffic bridge below the dam, the MWAK rail bridge was to the north, and on a more level plane; it was roughly half a mile to the north of the dam. The location of the two construction trestles in question is now ensconced within the perimeter of the dam; MWAK’s was lower, CBI’s was higher and more southerly.
Unfortunately, CBI put off hiring back the majority of workers until the end of the year, causing economic hardship to many workers and their families who had moved to the area; the average worker earned only $0.80 an hour, and in dangerous conditions. On the other hand, railroad workers – when cement was in demand and concrete was being poured – were paid fairly well. Brakemen and firemen were paid $0.90 an hour, conductors one dollar, and locomotive engineers $1.35 an hour; these men would have still had jobs when concrete works shut down because they brought in many different supplies used in construction.
The Grand Coulee Dam project had brought a level of prosperity back to the Basin. A gas station owner in Coulee City was reported as saying that he saw business jump to a point where he was making more profit in a month than he previously had in a year. Thousands of men who couldn’t find jobs elsewhere in the country rode the rails to reach this barren desert, hoping to work on the massive dam and its railroad.
The next decade saw not only a continuation of these hopes, but the completion of the dam, the second world war, and the beginning of the long-awaited irrigation project that would breathe new life into Grant County and the Columbia Basin.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Mason Firm Changes Location of Bridge
From the “Spokane Chronicle.”
September 17, 1934
In order to do away with too many switchbacks, the site for the Silas Mason company railroad bridge has been changed from the original location above the Tuttle Brothers’ ferry to a point a quarter mile downstream, near the U.S. Geological gauging station.
It was found that after the first location had been fairly definitely decided upon that because of the high elevation of the government railroad it would take three or four switchbacks to reach the river’s edge there the line would cross on the bridge. On the other had if the company built the bridge higher to do away with these switchbacks it would necessitate building them on the opposite shore to bring the line down again.
The new plans call for the construction of the line from the Osborne canyon, where the U.S. Construction railway begins its switchback to the powerhouse, to follow the sheer granite mountain side, on the northwest of the model engineers’ town to the river shore. This arrangement will not interfere with any engineering plans for the town.
It was necessary to take the tracts below the gauging station because of the depth of the river between the ferry slips and the station. A deep gap seems to feature the river floor between these two points. Below the river-measuring plant the river is comparatively shallow.
September 17, 1934
In order to do away with too many switchbacks, the site for the Silas Mason company railroad bridge has been changed from the original location above the Tuttle Brothers’ ferry to a point a quarter mile downstream, near the U.S. Geological gauging station.
It was found that after the first location had been fairly definitely decided upon that because of the high elevation of the government railroad it would take three or four switchbacks to reach the river’s edge there the line would cross on the bridge. On the other had if the company built the bridge higher to do away with these switchbacks it would necessitate building them on the opposite shore to bring the line down again.
The new plans call for the construction of the line from the Osborne canyon, where the U.S. Construction railway begins its switchback to the powerhouse, to follow the sheer granite mountain side, on the northwest of the model engineers’ town to the river shore. This arrangement will not interfere with any engineering plans for the town.
It was necessary to take the tracts below the gauging station because of the depth of the river between the ferry slips and the station. A deep gap seems to feature the river floor between these two points. Below the river-measuring plant the river is comparatively shallow.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Railroads of Grant County 1919-1929
The second decade of the 20th century can be characterized as the “Golden Age” of railroad history. Nationally, track mileage peaked in 1916 at 254,000 miles, and both goods and passengers regularly traveled by train. Here in Grant County, laid track also peaked, and numerous small towns had sprung up in the high desert because of the easy access afforded by rail.
The 1920s began the decline of the railroad, both locally and nationally, for many reasons. Changes in modes of transportation, government intervention and World War I, and local weather and economic issues all played a part in railroad history in Grant County.
In June of 1914, the first world war began, eventually drawing the country into the conflict half a world away. As war resources began to be shipped from production locations to the battlefront, the government pushed for greater speed and efficiency in transport. Manufacturers had previously sent their goods along their favorite railroad lines, no matter how inefficient. Under the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the route of travel, efficient or not, shared the same rate for the total service; in order for a railroad to gain any profit, a manufacturer must send their goods along that line and thus grant it a piece of the shipping pie. For the moment, individual railroads were making money, but goods weren’t traveling fast enough, and a shortage of cars was beginning to hamper both normal business traffic and government war efforts.
A few months later, in August of 1914, the new Panama Canal opened for business hundreds of miles away from the Basin. It wasn’t long, though, until its effects were felt here, limiting the business transported across the county in favor of a water route to the east coast. Ironically enough, the original engineer for the canal was John F. Stevens, the former chief surveyor for the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba (SPMM) who located Stevens Pass in 1890, and would eventually act as a consultant on the project to construct a second Cascade tunnel, which has benefited the State of Washington for the last sixty years.
In reaction to the chaos ensuing in the industry, the railroads had come under government control at the very end of 1917 to improve traffic flow throughout the United States during war time. Shipments were now required to be sent along the most efficient path, so the payment of rates went to the line with the most direct route from point A to point B. Smaller and more remote lines naturally earned less profit, relying more on local agriculture and business.
During this time period, though, loads of freight declined too, as the drought of 1917 to 1924 hit Columbia Basin farmers hard. Many moved away after crops failed to produce the amount grown in previous years. Fewer people buying what was left meant fewer shipments to towns. Fewer and smaller crops meant less grain to move to market by rail. The picture was bleak, despite the prosperous war economy elsewhere.
On November 11, 1918, the war ended. The railroads, though, were far from safe and continued to struggle under ICC oversight, government ownership, and economic hardship. The Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul (CMSP) completed the electrification of its mainline between Othello and Tacoma in 1919, the only line in Grant County to do so. This gave it the ability to use electrically-powered locomotives to move its trains, rather than the inefficient steam locomotives of the past. The cost of this venture was substantial, and paired with the loss of an impressive amount of business to the Panama Canal, bankruptcy was a dire possibility. The war had sustained the CMSP, which now discovered that they only carried 1/10 of the potential of their new line. Demand for rail service had crashed, leaving several railroad lines in financial straits.
On March 1, 1920, by order of President Wilson, the government control finally ended American railroad's 26 months of nationalization. The control had allowed the government to run all the railroads as one big system, instead of the many individual companies. While this allowed for direct routings of freight, it also meant that unneeded passenger services were dropped in favor of the automobile.
Still, larger railroad companies continued to plan for expansion. The Northern Pacific (NP) did many cost studies on the use of the CMSP between Lind and Ellensburg in the early 1920s. During 1922, the NP was still considering this option, which would shorten its mileage across the state, in the hope of speeding transcontinental freight runs. One of the many things the NP considered included whether they would be fully responsible for any costs associated with fueling and maintaining steam locomotives, since the CMSP was electrified through most of this section. They were also very concerned for the grades involved in getting up the west bank of the Columbia River. A second option used the CMPS to the Beverly area too, before turning south and crossing the Columbia in the vicinity of Priest Rapids by way of a newly-built line in their own name. Heavy grading between this crossing point and the Yakima area kept this option from being considered further either.
Another part of the industry’s decline was due to regulations placed on the railroads by the government, via the ICC. While general and maintenance costs rose dramatically during the war, railroads were not given permission to increase their rates to match inflation and thus recoup these losses. As the public began abandoning old-fashioned rail travel and took to the automobile, and as road quality continued to increase over time to the benefit of truck service, railroads found it harder to maintain branchline and mail service to every remote place. Mail continued to be delivered by rail, but to fewer places than once served. One cutback was the discontinuance of Central Washington’s train between Adrian and Coulee City on June 28, 1925.
A few months earlier, in March, the CMSP finally succumbed to bankruptcy, and finally reorganized as the Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul & Pacific on January 13, 1927. This was just one of the many changes made on Grant County railroads in the 1920s.
Krupp, a small community on the Great Northern line had originally been named by railroad officials trying to flatter a local German immigrant farmer. A prominent and centuries-old German dynasty by that name manufactured armaments for American foes in World War I, prompting a demand for a renaming of the town amid anti-German sentiment after the war. A suggestion had been Crab Creek, but this was a duplicate of a town in Lincoln County. The name of Marlin was finally adopted in September of 1918, as a reference to another early settler, John Marlin. The depot in Marlin burned down on May 18, 1925. A year later, a 24’x48’ depot was moved from Downs (east of Odessa in Lincoln County) to the same location, and it survived there for ten years.
Coulee Junction’s name was likewise deemed to be too similar to another railroad town, this time to Coulee City. The new namesake was a W.H. Adair, who owned a ranch near the junction and operated a restaurant in Coulee City. This name, too, needed to be changed because it was too similar to Adrian, the junction fifteen miles to the south. On June 1, 1922, it was renamed Odair by the NP.
For reasons now lost to history, the Trinidad depot was also moved from its original location to a point about 1/3 of a mile east “to better serve the needs of the people there.”
The Great Northern station at Wilson Creek was established as an intermediate terminal in 1892 and was situated with a roundhouse and a large coaling dock. The terminal itself was moved to Wenatchee in 1925, at the same time that the Leavenworth terminal was closed. These two changes coincided with a related project on the Great Northern line over Stevens Pass, which abandoned a 2.6-mile tunnel and bored a new 7.8-mile tunnel.
Coulee City, though, remained a viable intermediate terminal through this decade, but in a different form than is seen today. In 1926, the following railroad items were to be found there: a two-story passenger and freight depot; a stock yard; a large ice house; a two-stall roundhouse; a 56-foot, bridge-style turntable; a sand and oil house; an ash pit; and a coal dock and shed with 254-foot loading trestle and 206-foot approach trestle. This was typical for an end-of-branchline station, or intermediate terminal. Only the depot remains, though not in its former location, and the occasional remnant of a foundation.
The last significant railroad event in Grant County in the 1920s occurred on February 1, 1927, when the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern filed application with Interstate Commerce Commission for their third attempt at uniting the two companies. This was similar to the second planned merger back in 1903 that caused the building of the branch from Coulee City on the NP to the mainline station on the GN at Adrian. The unification did not happen at this time, due to restrictions placed on the two railroads that they did not want to keep. The ICC, under a mandate to set up regional railroads to replace the multiple private rail companies within each region, had demanded that the two companies sell a mutual subsidiary line which ran to Chicago from St. Paul. Both companies declined.
As the second decade of Grant County’s existence drew to a close, the rail industry faced difficult and desperate times. The next decade, though, brought another federal stimulus to the region, sustaining the railroads for another decade.
The 1920s began the decline of the railroad, both locally and nationally, for many reasons. Changes in modes of transportation, government intervention and World War I, and local weather and economic issues all played a part in railroad history in Grant County.
In June of 1914, the first world war began, eventually drawing the country into the conflict half a world away. As war resources began to be shipped from production locations to the battlefront, the government pushed for greater speed and efficiency in transport. Manufacturers had previously sent their goods along their favorite railroad lines, no matter how inefficient. Under the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the route of travel, efficient or not, shared the same rate for the total service; in order for a railroad to gain any profit, a manufacturer must send their goods along that line and thus grant it a piece of the shipping pie. For the moment, individual railroads were making money, but goods weren’t traveling fast enough, and a shortage of cars was beginning to hamper both normal business traffic and government war efforts.
A few months later, in August of 1914, the new Panama Canal opened for business hundreds of miles away from the Basin. It wasn’t long, though, until its effects were felt here, limiting the business transported across the county in favor of a water route to the east coast. Ironically enough, the original engineer for the canal was John F. Stevens, the former chief surveyor for the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba (SPMM) who located Stevens Pass in 1890, and would eventually act as a consultant on the project to construct a second Cascade tunnel, which has benefited the State of Washington for the last sixty years.
In reaction to the chaos ensuing in the industry, the railroads had come under government control at the very end of 1917 to improve traffic flow throughout the United States during war time. Shipments were now required to be sent along the most efficient path, so the payment of rates went to the line with the most direct route from point A to point B. Smaller and more remote lines naturally earned less profit, relying more on local agriculture and business.
During this time period, though, loads of freight declined too, as the drought of 1917 to 1924 hit Columbia Basin farmers hard. Many moved away after crops failed to produce the amount grown in previous years. Fewer people buying what was left meant fewer shipments to towns. Fewer and smaller crops meant less grain to move to market by rail. The picture was bleak, despite the prosperous war economy elsewhere.
On November 11, 1918, the war ended. The railroads, though, were far from safe and continued to struggle under ICC oversight, government ownership, and economic hardship. The Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul (CMSP) completed the electrification of its mainline between Othello and Tacoma in 1919, the only line in Grant County to do so. This gave it the ability to use electrically-powered locomotives to move its trains, rather than the inefficient steam locomotives of the past. The cost of this venture was substantial, and paired with the loss of an impressive amount of business to the Panama Canal, bankruptcy was a dire possibility. The war had sustained the CMSP, which now discovered that they only carried 1/10 of the potential of their new line. Demand for rail service had crashed, leaving several railroad lines in financial straits.
On March 1, 1920, by order of President Wilson, the government control finally ended American railroad's 26 months of nationalization. The control had allowed the government to run all the railroads as one big system, instead of the many individual companies. While this allowed for direct routings of freight, it also meant that unneeded passenger services were dropped in favor of the automobile.
Still, larger railroad companies continued to plan for expansion. The Northern Pacific (NP) did many cost studies on the use of the CMSP between Lind and Ellensburg in the early 1920s. During 1922, the NP was still considering this option, which would shorten its mileage across the state, in the hope of speeding transcontinental freight runs. One of the many things the NP considered included whether they would be fully responsible for any costs associated with fueling and maintaining steam locomotives, since the CMSP was electrified through most of this section. They were also very concerned for the grades involved in getting up the west bank of the Columbia River. A second option used the CMPS to the Beverly area too, before turning south and crossing the Columbia in the vicinity of Priest Rapids by way of a newly-built line in their own name. Heavy grading between this crossing point and the Yakima area kept this option from being considered further either.
Another part of the industry’s decline was due to regulations placed on the railroads by the government, via the ICC. While general and maintenance costs rose dramatically during the war, railroads were not given permission to increase their rates to match inflation and thus recoup these losses. As the public began abandoning old-fashioned rail travel and took to the automobile, and as road quality continued to increase over time to the benefit of truck service, railroads found it harder to maintain branchline and mail service to every remote place. Mail continued to be delivered by rail, but to fewer places than once served. One cutback was the discontinuance of Central Washington’s train between Adrian and Coulee City on June 28, 1925.
A few months earlier, in March, the CMSP finally succumbed to bankruptcy, and finally reorganized as the Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul & Pacific on January 13, 1927. This was just one of the many changes made on Grant County railroads in the 1920s.
Krupp, a small community on the Great Northern line had originally been named by railroad officials trying to flatter a local German immigrant farmer. A prominent and centuries-old German dynasty by that name manufactured armaments for American foes in World War I, prompting a demand for a renaming of the town amid anti-German sentiment after the war. A suggestion had been Crab Creek, but this was a duplicate of a town in Lincoln County. The name of Marlin was finally adopted in September of 1918, as a reference to another early settler, John Marlin. The depot in Marlin burned down on May 18, 1925. A year later, a 24’x48’ depot was moved from Downs (east of Odessa in Lincoln County) to the same location, and it survived there for ten years.
Coulee Junction’s name was likewise deemed to be too similar to another railroad town, this time to Coulee City. The new namesake was a W.H. Adair, who owned a ranch near the junction and operated a restaurant in Coulee City. This name, too, needed to be changed because it was too similar to Adrian, the junction fifteen miles to the south. On June 1, 1922, it was renamed Odair by the NP.
For reasons now lost to history, the Trinidad depot was also moved from its original location to a point about 1/3 of a mile east “to better serve the needs of the people there.”
The Great Northern station at Wilson Creek was established as an intermediate terminal in 1892 and was situated with a roundhouse and a large coaling dock. The terminal itself was moved to Wenatchee in 1925, at the same time that the Leavenworth terminal was closed. These two changes coincided with a related project on the Great Northern line over Stevens Pass, which abandoned a 2.6-mile tunnel and bored a new 7.8-mile tunnel.
Coulee City, though, remained a viable intermediate terminal through this decade, but in a different form than is seen today. In 1926, the following railroad items were to be found there: a two-story passenger and freight depot; a stock yard; a large ice house; a two-stall roundhouse; a 56-foot, bridge-style turntable; a sand and oil house; an ash pit; and a coal dock and shed with 254-foot loading trestle and 206-foot approach trestle. This was typical for an end-of-branchline station, or intermediate terminal. Only the depot remains, though not in its former location, and the occasional remnant of a foundation.
The last significant railroad event in Grant County in the 1920s occurred on February 1, 1927, when the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern filed application with Interstate Commerce Commission for their third attempt at uniting the two companies. This was similar to the second planned merger back in 1903 that caused the building of the branch from Coulee City on the NP to the mainline station on the GN at Adrian. The unification did not happen at this time, due to restrictions placed on the two railroads that they did not want to keep. The ICC, under a mandate to set up regional railroads to replace the multiple private rail companies within each region, had demanded that the two companies sell a mutual subsidiary line which ran to Chicago from St. Paul. Both companies declined.
As the second decade of Grant County’s existence drew to a close, the rail industry faced difficult and desperate times. The next decade, though, brought another federal stimulus to the region, sustaining the railroads for another decade.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Plan 200-Foot Tunnel For Dam Site Railway
From the “Spokane Chronicle.”
October 29, 1934
A 150 to 200 feet long tunnel will be bored through the solid granite mass northwest of the model engineer’s townsite, Harvey Slocum, construction superintendent for the MWAK, declared Saturday.
Jack hammer men were at work Saturday on the first stretch of the Mason railway which will connect up with the U. S. Construction railway from Odair to the dam site, now being built by David H. Ryan and Crick & Kuney. The tunnel will be located approximately 100 feet from the spot where the company line connects with the government’s.
The tunnel is necessary, Slocum explained, in order to do away with making an almost impossible turn along the outside of the 800-foot solid rock wall. By boring through the granite, no sharp curve will be necessary.
Route of Rail Line
Locomotives and cars will run through the tunnel, then along the outside of the mountain of rock to a point near the U. S. gauging station, over the railway bridge, yet to be built, then along the 1020 level on the on the east shore to a point near the Addison-Miller camps.
The railway bridge will be a timber-truss affair.
Photo of the completed tunnel can be seen here.
October 29, 1934
A 150 to 200 feet long tunnel will be bored through the solid granite mass northwest of the model engineer’s townsite, Harvey Slocum, construction superintendent for the MWAK, declared Saturday.
Jack hammer men were at work Saturday on the first stretch of the Mason railway which will connect up with the U. S. Construction railway from Odair to the dam site, now being built by David H. Ryan and Crick & Kuney. The tunnel will be located approximately 100 feet from the spot where the company line connects with the government’s.
The tunnel is necessary, Slocum explained, in order to do away with making an almost impossible turn along the outside of the 800-foot solid rock wall. By boring through the granite, no sharp curve will be necessary.
Route of Rail Line
Locomotives and cars will run through the tunnel, then along the outside of the mountain of rock to a point near the U. S. gauging station, over the railway bridge, yet to be built, then along the 1020 level on the on the east shore to a point near the Addison-Miller camps.
The railway bridge will be a timber-truss affair.
Photo of the completed tunnel can be seen here.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Railroads of Grant County 1939-1949
Here is the unedited version of the Centennial piece that appeared in print on 5-22-09.
As if the Roaring ‘20s hadn’t brought enough change and the Depression era of the ‘30s weren’t too solemnizing, the decade of the ‘40s brought more of both across the country, as well as in Grant County.
The largest project the region had ever seen – the construction of Grand Coulee Dam – was progressing nicely in 1939. With the help of the government railroad line from Coulee City to Grand Coulee, a long-standing record was set for the largest amount of concrete placed in 24 hours, at an impressive 41,000 tons on May 25. Materials and supplies for the construction effort continued to pour into Grand Coulee for the rest of the decade.
As the county looked ahead to the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, plans began to be laid for creating irrigation districts to manage the water soon to be headed south from the great dam. The legislature first created the legal foundation for irrigation districts; then landowners locally and across the state were convened to vote on the creation of these districts. The Great Northern line was instrumental in this action, conducting a special train to bring absentee landowners from the west side of the state to Grant County to vote on this historic measure.
The special train itself was an unusual sight. Passengership on the railroad lines had been suffering from a severe decline throughout the Great Depression, which was only slightly preceded by the increased popularity of private automobiles over rail travel in the 1920s. Many measures were being employed to try to lure customers back to the railroad; one of these was to modernize the fleets.
Over the previous decade, passenger cars that had once been made of wood and iron were now being constructed of stainless steel, with additions of aluminum and Cor-Ten steel. This reduced the weight of the cars, giving streamlined speed and greater comfort to the passengers – as well as a more streamlined look – compared to the “rattletraps” described in the early history of trains. Many of these steel cars went unpainted except for the legally-required reporting marks.
Inside, car builders created luxurious rooms and private compartments, such as the Pullman Company’s roomettes – one-passenger suites similar to the twin-berth compartments used in Europe. Even these amenities, though, didn’t make up for low ridership. People were taking to the new highways at an unprecedented rate, and rail companies were beginning to sell off unprofitable ventures, such as the interurban rail system between Everett and Seattle, which had been in place for forty years.
The world was changing. Cars were becoming increasingly popular, prompting the construction of new highways; public transit in any form was in a long, slow decline, including the urban streetcar systems. Even the majestic steam engines of the past were on their way out, making reluctant room for new diesel-powered locomotives.
Steam engines were becoming unwieldy monstrosities. The size of the engine components had nearly outsized the capacity of the tracks to hold them, and required more mechanical operation than ever before. Maintenance requirements slowed turn-around time after each run, and the constant necessity for water stole precious time. With the advent of mass-production of the diesel locomotive, steam engines were being relegated to yard work, scrap yards, museums and amusement parks.
General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division was the first to mass-produce the new locomotives. Its “FT” toured the country at the beginning of 1940, showing off 5400 horsepower in four power units, and blowing past steam locomotives at every turn. Instead of the frequent water and maintenance stops, it seemingly turned on a dime and did twice the work or more. It could be idled for days at a time, run by one man instead of a team, and created less noise and smoke pollution. Multiple units could be coupled together – or scaled – to complete larger jobs as well. It was reliable, comfortable for both passenger and crew, and with thermal efficiencies running at 73% compared to steam’s 26% or less, it appeared to be an engineering miracle. Steam engine producers couldn’t keep up; as the companies began switching to the longer-hauling diesel trains, smaller division points began to close.
Besides the impressive sight of these new machines rumbling past (Milwaukee Road’s first diesel on the mainline ran from Avery, Idaho to Othello, Washington on November 6, 1941), much of the Basin was unaffected by these changes. Passenger service was still operational between the small towns of Grant County and surrounding areas, but sleeper compartments and luxury accommodations weren’t the most important features considered when travelling anywhere locally.
One change that made an appearance in 1940 was the name switch for the railroad post office on the Northern Pacific from “Coulee” back to “Coulee City” on February 25. Again, though, it was a minor change and few took notice.
What did bring notice, though, was the news in June that Nazi Germany had conquered France. Four months later, the military initiated the first peacetime draft in United States’ history. GN’s president, Ralph Budd, was appointed to be the Transportation Commissioner on the Council of National Defense, and began to determine the plan for the transport of troops and supplies during the inevitable involvement of the U.S. in the war. During WWI, this level of planning hadn’t been accomplished and railroad officials wanted to be prepared for changes affecting their business practices.
Budd’s policy centered on the “discontinuance of trains that are not necessary.” He warned the railroads six months ahead of time to expect troop movements to double in 1942, but advised they not expand their fleets; in fact, he asked them to consider which trains could be dropped. A month later, the military issued the same directive, and when the country entered the war on December 4, 1941, these predictions came true. Troops moved from the interior of the country to the coasts, and supplies for military production moved back to the interior from coastal ports. The entire state of Washington was actively engaged in converting raw materials into finished products and shipping them back to military posts on the west side of the state. Passenger service was all but suspended. Civilian riders holding tickets were regularly bumped from their scheduled train due to lack of seating.
Abandonment of branch line tracks was considered, to help with the wartime shortage of metals, but other than a few spur tracks to nowhere, no rails were lifted in the Columbia Basin. Most branch line traffic in Grant County was agricultural in nature, not participating in wartime industrial expansion, and so remained fairly stable.
The notable exception was, of course, the U.S. government railroad to Grand Coulee. A year after the draft was initiated in 1940, the first generator came online at the new dam, providing the first delivery of locally-generated electricity to Nespelem’s Rural Electric Association on September 12. Other generators were yet to be completed, and the construction of the irrigation pumping plant was just beginning, so the rail line continued to be used heavily.
With the war raging on the other side of the world, though, the country again went into wartime industrial mode, salvaging metals, mass-producing supplies, and conserving food and resources. In a fictional “letter home from the war” published in a Milwaukee Road magazine in 1943, the company advertised the success of their salvage operations:
The folks at home who work on The Milwaukee Road are doing all right too. President Scandrett had a message in the magazine the other day telling about it: "Four thousand pounds of scrap and fittings were removed from under buildings. There have been 98,650 pounds of shop-made tools taken from the blacksmith shop and converted into scrap ... also from the shops, 1,849 pounds of brass recovered ... also 36,559 pounds of miscellaneous scrap recovered from the roundhouse and shops." (The Milwaukee Magazine, May 10 1943)
When the war came home with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the realities of the situation did finally touch the Columbia Basin. Local Japanese immigrants and naturalized citizens were forced off their farms and out of their communities as far east as Yakima by Lieutenant General De Witt’s Public Proclamation Number One, delivered on May 26, 1942. These evacuees were shuttled to Portland by train, and then on to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, northwest of Cody, Wyoming.
The construction of the irrigation system stemming from Grand Coulee Dam was put on hold as well, in order to supply much-needed energy to aluminum plants and to the top-secret Manhattan Project at Hanford, which began in March of 1943 after the condemnation of private land for an undisclosed military purpose. Generation of electricity took precedence; officials at Grand Coulee even borrowed generators from other facilities for a short time until the dam was sufficiently completed to do the job.
While Hanford was specifically chosen by the Army and its contractor DuPont because of its remote location from highways and railroads, 158 miles of new track were built on the site and linked to the Milwaukee mainline at Beverly. The Milwaukee was also used to move much of the town’s population in one quick operation to other locations outside the project site.
Not even the 51,000 employees at Hanford knew what was being created there. Secrecy and defense of those secrets was a focus of a great deal of energy, since no one had any idea when one or all major projects could become a target for Japanese and German attacks. Grand Coulee Dam, too, could be a target, as could the government railroad supplying workers there with materials to create greater hydro-electric generating capability.
A young married couple living in a remodeled railroad car in Odair, at the head of the government line, took the job of Air Raid Warden in 1942 under the national Air Raid Program. Roy and Maxine Ramey watched the sky for suspicious airplanes and policed the use of blackout shades in their tiny neighborhood of four people. In an interview with the couple, they shared that Roy’s hours, and thus Maxine’s as well, numbered 62 a week – nine each on Monday through Saturday, with an extra eight on Sundays. Maxine reported that they typically saw one or two planes a day during the six years Roy served his country and community under this program.
At the other end of the county, ten military passengers – not yet to the front where they would serve – were killed, ten others injured, and one railway official also injured in a train wreck near Warden on August 4, 1943 at nearly 1 a.m. In this case, the length of one car caused severe destruction and loss of life when a regular train didn’t pull far enough into the clear to allow a special military train to pass safely. When the locomotive of passenger train Extra 251 West collided into the locomotive of mixed train Extra 849 West, which was frantically trying to move backwards off the mainline at 2 miles per hour, the former train was moving at 55 miles per hour. Train 251 was pulling twelve Pullman sleeper cars of military personnel; car eleven telescoped more than thirty feet into car twelve. With the increased traffic came increased chance of accidents; until this point, the county had been spared any major rail casualties since 1917.
In Ephrata, more changes were afoot. A rail transportation department had been created to fill government orders for the transportation of freight and troops whether by train, or by other means. On August 27, 1942, this name was changed to the Transportation Corps, and more personnel were granted to it to accomplish its duties. Two personnel were assigned to the Ephrata GN Railway station, where Mr. E. C. Pittinger, railway agent, allotted them 100 square feet in which to set up their operations.
In the next two weeks, the GN and military engineers began construction of a railway spur track from the GN mainline to a warehouse area on the new Ephrata Air Base. This short spur minimized freight handling, added efficiency, and provided secrecy for military movements on and off the air base.
As published by Patricia J. Dunsten in “Certain Lands Southeast of Ephrata,” the GN made its first trip on the spur on November 15, 1943, “bringing in one carload of coal for the post engineers, one carload of targets for the base ordinance, one carload of engines for the sub-depot and one carload of Teletype equipment for the base signal.”
The air base eventually purchased their own Plymouth gas-powered locomotive, but before this, the GN used its own local power to switch cars on the military spur. Small gas-powered “tug” vehicles, used to move planes between the hangars and the airfield, were also used to move rail cars from the spur to various unloading points. Walt Thayer, a Civil Service guard for the spur, recalled in an interview in 1993, that he often had to repair switchpoints and rerail cars after these tugs mishandled the boxcars. He also recalled that penny-pinching railroad employees would stop their trains on the air base spur while they grabbed lunch at the mess hall for a measly “two bits.” On their way back to the train, they’d convince some other civilian with privileges to find them cigarettes, a rationed item highly desired by many trainmen.
To the northeast, at Hartline, the NP tore down the 50-year-old depot on February 3, 1944. This was also the same year the NP built its last new steam engine.
In other places outside the county, the war continued, oblivious to the changes the locals were experiencing. In September, the first reactor at Hanford went critical, launching the production of uranium and plutonium that would eventually be used to end the war. Two months later, Japan launched 9000 incendiary balloons from Hokkaido into the jet stream, hoping to set fires on the west coast of the United States and draw resources away from the war effort. On February 12 of the next year, the first of the 28 balloons ultimately to be found in Washington State was discovered north of Spokane. Another balloon exploded on power lines at Hanford, causing a blackout and a halt in operations for a short time.
Five days before President Truman announced Victory-in-Europe Day in May of 1945, the Soap Lake depot in the Grant Orchards area burned down under non-military circumstances, to be replaced by a 10’x16’ watchman’s house from a siding by the name of Columbia River, near the Rock Island Dam. It took crews five months to move the small building. Winchester, too, replaced its 37-year-old depot that year with a small shack, which only lasted another six years.
With the European end of the war finally over, the Milwaukee Road published yet another letter between their fictional father and son, which included the assertion that the company was planning for peacetime improvements to the line, including new track. The company continued to speak highly of their own ability to handle the increased traffic and requirements during the war, as well as the successes of the Army’s 744th Railway Operating Battalion, whose 6916 members – some employees of Milwaukee – had served on the European railroads during the first half of the war. Little did they know their fictitional prediction that “the Japs won’t last long” would be so accurate.
On July 16, the first atomic explosion was tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Less than one month later, when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the northwest would hear for the first time what was happening south of Grant County in that secret complex. The world – and especially the Columbia Basin – was still reeling from this revelation when the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki; this particular bomb specifically used the plutonium created alongside the Columbia River. When Japan surrendered the next day, all the trouble and sacrifices paid by the railroads, industry, business, government, and even individual citizens seemed to have paid off. The war was finally over, and everyone had contributed to that end.
Life slowly began to return to normal. The Milwaukee Road, constantly fighting bankruptcy, announced that it was once again out of receivership in December of 1945. Construction resumed on the pumping plant at the Grand Coulee Dam the next year. In 1947, the Washington State legislature finished its legal battle to construct limited-access highways to ensure fewer accidents on the greatly-popular car routes.
The railroads felt this. Officials noted the increase in rail traffic due to the war, following a long, slow slump in passengership. The hope was that, after the war, numbers would average out and level off. This didn’t happen, and still more passenger-service programs were scrapped, including Tacoma’s Municipal Belt Line Railway. It was a continuation of earlier trends, and it didn’t bring encouragement to rail companies or their employees.
Despite this reality, the railroads continued their vision of modernizing their lines, expecting that doing so would ultimately bring riders back to the rails. The older wood and iron passenger and box cars had been completely worn out during the war, making the purchase of new cars vital. The choice of luxury cars, though, was rarely allowed by tight budgets.
In 1947, the GN was the first northwest road to receive streamlined cars, which they had ordered during the war. The riding public saw these cars as the wave of the future, and for a limited time, ridership improved.
New diesels were also featured on the Milwaukee line at the same time. The streamlined “dreamliner” Olympian Hiawatha pulled its first train in June from Chicago to Seattle/Tacoma with a SkyTop lounge on the end, a rounded glass-top observation car. The train also included coach cars, Touralux sleeper cars, and a Tip Top Grill and dining car, but lacked the Pullman private-room sleepers for which the Milwaukee Road had hoped. The trip took 45 hours, the fastest schedule yet recorded between these two endpoints. The Milwaukee also began using end-to-end and dispatcher-to-train radios in Washington that same year.
The NP placed its new cars into service in 1947 too. In an ad run locally on June 10, 1947, by Mr. H. L. Hutchinson, railway agent at Coulee City, the NP boasted of their new 4-unit, 6000-horsepower diesel locomotives, 1500 new boxcars, and a fancy, new yard machine called a forklift that could raise “a million peas high enough to walk under.” It seems this common machine today caused great excitement in 1947.
Mr. Hutchinson had had plenty of his own excitement that January when the Coulee City depot nearly burned down. The fireplace had burst into flames, and threw embers onto the roof shingles. Hutchinson praised the local fire department for saving everything in his family’s apartment on the second floor, and said that only a package of shingles was needed to fix the damage.
Coulee City seemed to be in the news often in 1947, especially in the month of January. The Coulee City News reported on the 24th that wheat couldn’t be shipped out of town due to a shortage of boxcars after the war. Only 29 cars of wheat had been loaded and shipped over the winter, but another 350,000 bushels remained in the Centennial Mills elevator and on local farms.
That summer, the old NP roundhouse at Coulee City burned in a “spectacular fire” which completely destroyed the structure. Telephones and power went out during the fire, leaving the fire department’s notification of the blaze to a passerby who opted to drive to the stationhouse. Efforts were also hampered by the distance to a fire hydrant and lack of sufficient hose to reach it. The building was owned at the time by Bitco, a tool-sharpening business involved with the Bureau of Reclamation’s Columbia Basin Project at the nearby Bacon Siphon Tunnel.
The railroads finished out this busy decade with high hopes, but deepening worries about their future. Agriculture still reigned in Grant County, though, and the railroad was the most efficient way to deliver those goods to the rest of the country. No one at the time doubted railroads would continue indefinitely in the Basin.
As if the Roaring ‘20s hadn’t brought enough change and the Depression era of the ‘30s weren’t too solemnizing, the decade of the ‘40s brought more of both across the country, as well as in Grant County.
The largest project the region had ever seen – the construction of Grand Coulee Dam – was progressing nicely in 1939. With the help of the government railroad line from Coulee City to Grand Coulee, a long-standing record was set for the largest amount of concrete placed in 24 hours, at an impressive 41,000 tons on May 25. Materials and supplies for the construction effort continued to pour into Grand Coulee for the rest of the decade.
As the county looked ahead to the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, plans began to be laid for creating irrigation districts to manage the water soon to be headed south from the great dam. The legislature first created the legal foundation for irrigation districts; then landowners locally and across the state were convened to vote on the creation of these districts. The Great Northern line was instrumental in this action, conducting a special train to bring absentee landowners from the west side of the state to Grant County to vote on this historic measure.
The special train itself was an unusual sight. Passengership on the railroad lines had been suffering from a severe decline throughout the Great Depression, which was only slightly preceded by the increased popularity of private automobiles over rail travel in the 1920s. Many measures were being employed to try to lure customers back to the railroad; one of these was to modernize the fleets.
Over the previous decade, passenger cars that had once been made of wood and iron were now being constructed of stainless steel, with additions of aluminum and Cor-Ten steel. This reduced the weight of the cars, giving streamlined speed and greater comfort to the passengers – as well as a more streamlined look – compared to the “rattletraps” described in the early history of trains. Many of these steel cars went unpainted except for the legally-required reporting marks.
Inside, car builders created luxurious rooms and private compartments, such as the Pullman Company’s roomettes – one-passenger suites similar to the twin-berth compartments used in Europe. Even these amenities, though, didn’t make up for low ridership. People were taking to the new highways at an unprecedented rate, and rail companies were beginning to sell off unprofitable ventures, such as the interurban rail system between Everett and Seattle, which had been in place for forty years.
The world was changing. Cars were becoming increasingly popular, prompting the construction of new highways; public transit in any form was in a long, slow decline, including the urban streetcar systems. Even the majestic steam engines of the past were on their way out, making reluctant room for new diesel-powered locomotives.
Steam engines were becoming unwieldy monstrosities. The size of the engine components had nearly outsized the capacity of the tracks to hold them, and required more mechanical operation than ever before. Maintenance requirements slowed turn-around time after each run, and the constant necessity for water stole precious time. With the advent of mass-production of the diesel locomotive, steam engines were being relegated to yard work, scrap yards, museums and amusement parks.
General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division was the first to mass-produce the new locomotives. Its “FT” toured the country at the beginning of 1940, showing off 5400 horsepower in four power units, and blowing past steam locomotives at every turn. Instead of the frequent water and maintenance stops, it seemingly turned on a dime and did twice the work or more. It could be idled for days at a time, run by one man instead of a team, and created less noise and smoke pollution. Multiple units could be coupled together – or scaled – to complete larger jobs as well. It was reliable, comfortable for both passenger and crew, and with thermal efficiencies running at 73% compared to steam’s 26% or less, it appeared to be an engineering miracle. Steam engine producers couldn’t keep up; as the companies began switching to the longer-hauling diesel trains, smaller division points began to close.
Besides the impressive sight of these new machines rumbling past (Milwaukee Road’s first diesel on the mainline ran from Avery, Idaho to Othello, Washington on November 6, 1941), much of the Basin was unaffected by these changes. Passenger service was still operational between the small towns of Grant County and surrounding areas, but sleeper compartments and luxury accommodations weren’t the most important features considered when travelling anywhere locally.
One change that made an appearance in 1940 was the name switch for the railroad post office on the Northern Pacific from “Coulee” back to “Coulee City” on February 25. Again, though, it was a minor change and few took notice.
What did bring notice, though, was the news in June that Nazi Germany had conquered France. Four months later, the military initiated the first peacetime draft in United States’ history. GN’s president, Ralph Budd, was appointed to be the Transportation Commissioner on the Council of National Defense, and began to determine the plan for the transport of troops and supplies during the inevitable involvement of the U.S. in the war. During WWI, this level of planning hadn’t been accomplished and railroad officials wanted to be prepared for changes affecting their business practices.
Budd’s policy centered on the “discontinuance of trains that are not necessary.” He warned the railroads six months ahead of time to expect troop movements to double in 1942, but advised they not expand their fleets; in fact, he asked them to consider which trains could be dropped. A month later, the military issued the same directive, and when the country entered the war on December 4, 1941, these predictions came true. Troops moved from the interior of the country to the coasts, and supplies for military production moved back to the interior from coastal ports. The entire state of Washington was actively engaged in converting raw materials into finished products and shipping them back to military posts on the west side of the state. Passenger service was all but suspended. Civilian riders holding tickets were regularly bumped from their scheduled train due to lack of seating.
Abandonment of branch line tracks was considered, to help with the wartime shortage of metals, but other than a few spur tracks to nowhere, no rails were lifted in the Columbia Basin. Most branch line traffic in Grant County was agricultural in nature, not participating in wartime industrial expansion, and so remained fairly stable.
The notable exception was, of course, the U.S. government railroad to Grand Coulee. A year after the draft was initiated in 1940, the first generator came online at the new dam, providing the first delivery of locally-generated electricity to Nespelem’s Rural Electric Association on September 12. Other generators were yet to be completed, and the construction of the irrigation pumping plant was just beginning, so the rail line continued to be used heavily.
With the war raging on the other side of the world, though, the country again went into wartime industrial mode, salvaging metals, mass-producing supplies, and conserving food and resources. In a fictional “letter home from the war” published in a Milwaukee Road magazine in 1943, the company advertised the success of their salvage operations:
The folks at home who work on The Milwaukee Road are doing all right too. President Scandrett had a message in the magazine the other day telling about it: "Four thousand pounds of scrap and fittings were removed from under buildings. There have been 98,650 pounds of shop-made tools taken from the blacksmith shop and converted into scrap ... also from the shops, 1,849 pounds of brass recovered ... also 36,559 pounds of miscellaneous scrap recovered from the roundhouse and shops." (The Milwaukee Magazine, May 10 1943)
When the war came home with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the realities of the situation did finally touch the Columbia Basin. Local Japanese immigrants and naturalized citizens were forced off their farms and out of their communities as far east as Yakima by Lieutenant General De Witt’s Public Proclamation Number One, delivered on May 26, 1942. These evacuees were shuttled to Portland by train, and then on to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, northwest of Cody, Wyoming.
The construction of the irrigation system stemming from Grand Coulee Dam was put on hold as well, in order to supply much-needed energy to aluminum plants and to the top-secret Manhattan Project at Hanford, which began in March of 1943 after the condemnation of private land for an undisclosed military purpose. Generation of electricity took precedence; officials at Grand Coulee even borrowed generators from other facilities for a short time until the dam was sufficiently completed to do the job.
While Hanford was specifically chosen by the Army and its contractor DuPont because of its remote location from highways and railroads, 158 miles of new track were built on the site and linked to the Milwaukee mainline at Beverly. The Milwaukee was also used to move much of the town’s population in one quick operation to other locations outside the project site.
Not even the 51,000 employees at Hanford knew what was being created there. Secrecy and defense of those secrets was a focus of a great deal of energy, since no one had any idea when one or all major projects could become a target for Japanese and German attacks. Grand Coulee Dam, too, could be a target, as could the government railroad supplying workers there with materials to create greater hydro-electric generating capability.
A young married couple living in a remodeled railroad car in Odair, at the head of the government line, took the job of Air Raid Warden in 1942 under the national Air Raid Program. Roy and Maxine Ramey watched the sky for suspicious airplanes and policed the use of blackout shades in their tiny neighborhood of four people. In an interview with the couple, they shared that Roy’s hours, and thus Maxine’s as well, numbered 62 a week – nine each on Monday through Saturday, with an extra eight on Sundays. Maxine reported that they typically saw one or two planes a day during the six years Roy served his country and community under this program.
At the other end of the county, ten military passengers – not yet to the front where they would serve – were killed, ten others injured, and one railway official also injured in a train wreck near Warden on August 4, 1943 at nearly 1 a.m. In this case, the length of one car caused severe destruction and loss of life when a regular train didn’t pull far enough into the clear to allow a special military train to pass safely. When the locomotive of passenger train Extra 251 West collided into the locomotive of mixed train Extra 849 West, which was frantically trying to move backwards off the mainline at 2 miles per hour, the former train was moving at 55 miles per hour. Train 251 was pulling twelve Pullman sleeper cars of military personnel; car eleven telescoped more than thirty feet into car twelve. With the increased traffic came increased chance of accidents; until this point, the county had been spared any major rail casualties since 1917.
In Ephrata, more changes were afoot. A rail transportation department had been created to fill government orders for the transportation of freight and troops whether by train, or by other means. On August 27, 1942, this name was changed to the Transportation Corps, and more personnel were granted to it to accomplish its duties. Two personnel were assigned to the Ephrata GN Railway station, where Mr. E. C. Pittinger, railway agent, allotted them 100 square feet in which to set up their operations.
In the next two weeks, the GN and military engineers began construction of a railway spur track from the GN mainline to a warehouse area on the new Ephrata Air Base. This short spur minimized freight handling, added efficiency, and provided secrecy for military movements on and off the air base.
As published by Patricia J. Dunsten in “Certain Lands Southeast of Ephrata,” the GN made its first trip on the spur on November 15, 1943, “bringing in one carload of coal for the post engineers, one carload of targets for the base ordinance, one carload of engines for the sub-depot and one carload of Teletype equipment for the base signal.”
The air base eventually purchased their own Plymouth gas-powered locomotive, but before this, the GN used its own local power to switch cars on the military spur. Small gas-powered “tug” vehicles, used to move planes between the hangars and the airfield, were also used to move rail cars from the spur to various unloading points. Walt Thayer, a Civil Service guard for the spur, recalled in an interview in 1993, that he often had to repair switchpoints and rerail cars after these tugs mishandled the boxcars. He also recalled that penny-pinching railroad employees would stop their trains on the air base spur while they grabbed lunch at the mess hall for a measly “two bits.” On their way back to the train, they’d convince some other civilian with privileges to find them cigarettes, a rationed item highly desired by many trainmen.
To the northeast, at Hartline, the NP tore down the 50-year-old depot on February 3, 1944. This was also the same year the NP built its last new steam engine.
In other places outside the county, the war continued, oblivious to the changes the locals were experiencing. In September, the first reactor at Hanford went critical, launching the production of uranium and plutonium that would eventually be used to end the war. Two months later, Japan launched 9000 incendiary balloons from Hokkaido into the jet stream, hoping to set fires on the west coast of the United States and draw resources away from the war effort. On February 12 of the next year, the first of the 28 balloons ultimately to be found in Washington State was discovered north of Spokane. Another balloon exploded on power lines at Hanford, causing a blackout and a halt in operations for a short time.
Five days before President Truman announced Victory-in-Europe Day in May of 1945, the Soap Lake depot in the Grant Orchards area burned down under non-military circumstances, to be replaced by a 10’x16’ watchman’s house from a siding by the name of Columbia River, near the Rock Island Dam. It took crews five months to move the small building. Winchester, too, replaced its 37-year-old depot that year with a small shack, which only lasted another six years.
With the European end of the war finally over, the Milwaukee Road published yet another letter between their fictional father and son, which included the assertion that the company was planning for peacetime improvements to the line, including new track. The company continued to speak highly of their own ability to handle the increased traffic and requirements during the war, as well as the successes of the Army’s 744th Railway Operating Battalion, whose 6916 members – some employees of Milwaukee – had served on the European railroads during the first half of the war. Little did they know their fictitional prediction that “the Japs won’t last long” would be so accurate.
On July 16, the first atomic explosion was tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Less than one month later, when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the northwest would hear for the first time what was happening south of Grant County in that secret complex. The world – and especially the Columbia Basin – was still reeling from this revelation when the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki; this particular bomb specifically used the plutonium created alongside the Columbia River. When Japan surrendered the next day, all the trouble and sacrifices paid by the railroads, industry, business, government, and even individual citizens seemed to have paid off. The war was finally over, and everyone had contributed to that end.
Life slowly began to return to normal. The Milwaukee Road, constantly fighting bankruptcy, announced that it was once again out of receivership in December of 1945. Construction resumed on the pumping plant at the Grand Coulee Dam the next year. In 1947, the Washington State legislature finished its legal battle to construct limited-access highways to ensure fewer accidents on the greatly-popular car routes.
The railroads felt this. Officials noted the increase in rail traffic due to the war, following a long, slow slump in passengership. The hope was that, after the war, numbers would average out and level off. This didn’t happen, and still more passenger-service programs were scrapped, including Tacoma’s Municipal Belt Line Railway. It was a continuation of earlier trends, and it didn’t bring encouragement to rail companies or their employees.
Despite this reality, the railroads continued their vision of modernizing their lines, expecting that doing so would ultimately bring riders back to the rails. The older wood and iron passenger and box cars had been completely worn out during the war, making the purchase of new cars vital. The choice of luxury cars, though, was rarely allowed by tight budgets.
In 1947, the GN was the first northwest road to receive streamlined cars, which they had ordered during the war. The riding public saw these cars as the wave of the future, and for a limited time, ridership improved.
New diesels were also featured on the Milwaukee line at the same time. The streamlined “dreamliner” Olympian Hiawatha pulled its first train in June from Chicago to Seattle/Tacoma with a SkyTop lounge on the end, a rounded glass-top observation car. The train also included coach cars, Touralux sleeper cars, and a Tip Top Grill and dining car, but lacked the Pullman private-room sleepers for which the Milwaukee Road had hoped. The trip took 45 hours, the fastest schedule yet recorded between these two endpoints. The Milwaukee also began using end-to-end and dispatcher-to-train radios in Washington that same year.
The NP placed its new cars into service in 1947 too. In an ad run locally on June 10, 1947, by Mr. H. L. Hutchinson, railway agent at Coulee City, the NP boasted of their new 4-unit, 6000-horsepower diesel locomotives, 1500 new boxcars, and a fancy, new yard machine called a forklift that could raise “a million peas high enough to walk under.” It seems this common machine today caused great excitement in 1947.
Mr. Hutchinson had had plenty of his own excitement that January when the Coulee City depot nearly burned down. The fireplace had burst into flames, and threw embers onto the roof shingles. Hutchinson praised the local fire department for saving everything in his family’s apartment on the second floor, and said that only a package of shingles was needed to fix the damage.
Coulee City seemed to be in the news often in 1947, especially in the month of January. The Coulee City News reported on the 24th that wheat couldn’t be shipped out of town due to a shortage of boxcars after the war. Only 29 cars of wheat had been loaded and shipped over the winter, but another 350,000 bushels remained in the Centennial Mills elevator and on local farms.
That summer, the old NP roundhouse at Coulee City burned in a “spectacular fire” which completely destroyed the structure. Telephones and power went out during the fire, leaving the fire department’s notification of the blaze to a passerby who opted to drive to the stationhouse. Efforts were also hampered by the distance to a fire hydrant and lack of sufficient hose to reach it. The building was owned at the time by Bitco, a tool-sharpening business involved with the Bureau of Reclamation’s Columbia Basin Project at the nearby Bacon Siphon Tunnel.
The railroads finished out this busy decade with high hopes, but deepening worries about their future. Agriculture still reigned in Grant County, though, and the railroad was the most efficient way to deliver those goods to the rest of the country. No one at the time doubted railroads would continue indefinitely in the Basin.
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