Rails To Paradise
The History of the Tacoma Eastern Railroad (1890-1919)
This long anticipated book features: over 500 pages of text--First person accounts of life on the railroad--400 rare photos-- custom drawn maps--plus many other illustrations. Learn the origins of this little logging line that grew from obscurity, survived despite economic panic, wars, limited financing, and both hostile and friendly acquisitions to become a national tourist destination and one of the most profitable rail lines west of Chicago.
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Retail Price: $69.95
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Please send check or money orders to:
Russell Holter
PO Box 1805
Tacoma, WA 98401-1805
Rails2paradise@netscape.net
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Early History of the Tacoma Eastern
In its pre-incorporation phase, the Tacoma Eastern Railroad
began life as a narrow gauge logging road, about two miles long, running from a
shallow-water wharf at the head of Commencement Bay in Tacoma, Washington. The railroad left the wharf fronting Dock Street and
continued southward through a steep chasm to a sawmill located near South 38th Street.
The railroad, the wharf, and the sawmill were owned and operated by brothers John
F. and George E. Hart. The brothers owned
and operated a wide variety of companies including (what Dilgard considers) the
first legitimate Opera house in Everett,
Washington. The little narrow gauge road brought
dimensional lumber materials from the Hart’s sawmill to their wharf; largely
for export to the lumber-hungry markets of San Francisco.
The early operations of the railroad appear to have been successful,
but the Hart Brothers must have been concerned about their limited ability to expand
their market base and move their product due to the fact they were unable
interchange cars with the standard gauge Northern Pacific Railroad. A reconstruction program was initiated to
convert the railroad from narrow to standard gauge. The two mile road was apparently completed by
May of 1890 and the line became known officially as the Tacoma Eastern Railroad
for the first time.
Once incorporated, the Hart brothers set out to tap vast
stands of virgin forests in the foothills of Mount Rainier by building
southward through the gulch that now bears the name of that railroad. The Puyallup Indians used this route prior to
pioneer settlement and referred to the gulch at the head of Commencement Bay as Wad Shum Shum, which means “the trail
to high ground.” During this important
building phase the Hart brothers managed to extend the railroad through the
steep gulch terminating about seven miles south of Tacoma near South 97th Street in a grove of virgin timber that is now the Midland neighborhood.
In 1892, the brothers fought valiantly to ward off the
deleterious effects of a massive fire that destroyed their Tacoma sawmill. They attempted to salvage their commercial
assets by leveraging their real estate holdings with ill-conceived bank notes. Although considered an accepted practice, the
timing could not have been worse as the Economic Panic of 1893 spelled the
eventual doom of the Hart Brothers and their far flung enterprises. During this period of decline and decay, the
Tacoma Eastern Railroad languished until the economy rebounded with the free-spending
days of the Yukon Gold Rush of 1899.
Independent Corporate Control
Under the direction of the court appointed bankruptcy
receivers: Ladd and Tilton Bank of Portland,
Oregon, new life was breathed
into the railroad. To facilitate the
rehabilitation of the railroad, the bank turned to Michigan entrepreneur John Bagley. Bagley had owned and operated logging
companies, sawmills, railroads, and a hotel. In 1899, the year that Mount Rainier National Park was established,
Bagley was made President of the Tacoma Eastern and ambitiously set out to push
the railroad another 60 miles to Ashford, Washington, the western gateway to
the Park. With construction financing
covertly provided by the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul
Railway, construction activities began in earnest. Unlike the stories of transcontinental
railroad construction in America,
the Tacoma Eastern Railroad was built with common labor provided mostly by
Japanese, not Chinese immigrants. The
last spike on the passenger line was driven at Ashford in the fall of
1904. However, the main freight line
diverged away to the south and would not be completed until it pushed into Morton, Washington in 1910 another 15 miles away.
Despite the fact the Northern Pacific Railroad had lobbied
Congress and conducted a land swap with the Secretary of the Interior to
expedite the formation of Mount
Rainier National Park,
the Tacoma Eastern Railroad managed to provide the best access for park visitors. Though it arrived too late in the 1904 season
to have much impact upon Mount
Rainier National Park,
the Tacoma Eastern Railroad enjoyed virtually exclusive rail access to the
scenic wonders of the mountain. With the
railroad’s arrival, Mount Rainier National Park would be
profoundly changed. This was evident in
the summer of 1905 when three of the Nation’s largest mountaineering clubs in America combined for a massive push to summit Mount Rainier. Until
this point, access to the mountain was only achieved by horseback. The average tourist stay at the park was
about a month. With rail passenger service
from Tacoma taking about three hours, the scenic
wonders of Mount Rainier National Park were now
opened to a larger market of visitors including those who were inclined to stay
only a week; or merely a day!
As the automobile encroached upon the American landscape,
the railroad stepped up efforts to ensure that it held on to its stake in the
tourist transportation market by offering rides in open-topped motorized
hacks. These machines were the precursor
to comfortable auto stages and the price of riding these contraptions was
eventually included in the train fare. For many visitors to the area, this was their first thrilling
opportunity to ride in an automobile; even if it was slow, prone to mechanical
failure, and offered no protection from the elements.
Systematically, the auto-stages (and eventually the
automobile) pushed aside the railroad as the primary means of passenger
traffic. However, what the Tacoma
Eastern Railroad became famous for was not moving passengers, but moving
timber—big timber and lots of it too. Ninety percent of all freight hauled by
the railroad was extricated from the forests beneath Mount
Rainier. Forty- and
fifty-car trains were loaded with logs, lumber, cedar bolts, shingles,
cordwood, wood pulp and delicately crafted wood trim. Of these materials, the logs were the most
prevalent and many of these train cars were loaded with one enormous log that measured
eight-feet or more in diameter at the butt and could tip the scales at
40-tons. These massive logs were
euphemistically referred to as “Tacoma Toothpicks”.
As the Tacoma Eastern Railroad’s secret benefactor, the
Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, was
building their Pacific extension to Tacoma,
the Tacoma Eastern was tasked with developing a new rail line between the
communities of Frederickson and McKenna. Ultimately, through mergers and acquisitions, this line would become a
vital link between Seattle and Portland. Eventually this line would serve an important role in shipping
explosives, bombs and military equipment to and from Ft. Lewis, Washington.
First person accounts of life on the Tacoma Eastern Railroad
in those early days can be found in the riveting tales of the life of Harry
French in a biography called “Railroadman”. Written by his son Chauncey Del French, Harry French was a two-fisted,
hard-drinking, railroad boomer who by the age of 40 had accumulated over 25-years
of service with various railroads. French’s
accounts of his father’s life reads like pulp-fiction and indeed--Chauncey Del French
made many pulp-fiction contributions to detective magazines under an assumed
name. However, the accounts found in
“Railroadman” have been researched and verified for accuracy.
Subsidiary Control
By July of 1909, the Chicago,
Milwaukee and St. Paul had changed its name to the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and
Pacific to better reflect the accomplishment of creating the shortest
transcontinental route of any railroad between the Pacific coast and the Great Lakes. Upon
arriving in Tacoma the veil of secrecy was lifted and the benefactor openly assumed control of the
local railroad. Even though the Tacoma
Eastern now had its headquarters in Chicago,
it operated as an independent subsidiary of the parent road for nearly ten
years.
The only President to have rode the rails of the Tacoma
Eastern was William Howard Taft. In
1911, President Taft came to Tacoma specifically
to visit Mount Rainier National Park. Taft arrived in early October but a snow
storm had preceded his arrival by a few days making the Presidential trip
rather arduous. The train trip took two
and half hours from Tacoma to Ashford. Upon his arrival, he was
whisked away in a motor carriage followed by a rather long entourage of
escorting dignitaries and one car loaded with mechanics to ensure that the cantankerous
carriages kept running. Accompanying the
President was a team of horses used to affect an extraction of the Presidential
motor coach when it became stuck in the rutted and frozen muck. Wanting to see as much as possible, President
Taft insisted that his driver take him from Longmire Springs where warm
accommodations awaited, up to Paradise. Before arriving at Paradise,
the Presidential car was so hopelessly stuck, that it was thought that the
President may have to spend the night on the mountain. Taft took the discomfort in stride and
managed to make his way to Paradise, if only for
a moment, before having to turn back for his train. By now, the Presidential entourage was spread
across the mountain side for miles. Taft
arrived back at the train over an hour late but told the train crew to delay
the departure for at least a half-hour more to give his entourage an
opportunity to catch the last train back to Tacoma. Stragglers faced the daunting prospect of riding back to Tacoma in the freezing
cold or spending the night at one of the hotels on the mountain until the train
returned in the morning.
At the dawn of the First World War, most all American
Railroads were federalized the day after Christmas 1917. President Woodrow Wilson felt he had no
alternative but to seize control of the railroads despite heroic efforts on the
part of railroad tycoons to standardize schedules and supply much needed
freight cars for the war effort in Europe. Walker Hines was appointed the
Director-General of the US Railroad Administration. Under his direction the USRA set construction
standards, lifted bothersome tariffs, and consolidated passenger services all
for the purposes of moving soldiers and machinery as efficiently as
possible. Once the war was over and the
USRA disbanded, federal control of the Tacoma Eastern Railroad was returned the
Chicago, Milwaukee,
St. Paul and
Pacific. Immediately thereafter, on
December 31, 1918, the Tacoma Eastern Railroad’s assets were consolidated and
its identity absorbed by the parent railroad.
Recent History
The Tacoma Eastern became known as the National Park branch
of the Chicago, Milwaukee,
St. Paul and
Pacific Railroad. Between 1919 and 1980,
the National Park branch would consistently be ranked the second most
economically viable branch in the entire 1700 mile Milwaukee Road system. However, on March 15, 1980, the Milwaukee Road became the single largest railroad failure in American history. The former Tacoma Eastern portion of the
railroad was conveyed to the Weyerhaeuser Corporation who used the line to move
logs from Thurston and Lewis counties to a trans-loading facility at the Port of Tacoma for international export.
Weyerhaeuser Corporation operated the line almost
exclusively for twelve years. The only
other railroad activities the Weyerhaeuser Corporation tolerated was the
development of the Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad. The Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad was the
brainchild of L. T. “Tom” Murray Jr., President of the Murray Pacific
Corporation. The Mount Rainier Scenic
was, and is today, an excursion road that shuttles passengers about seven miles
on former Tacoma Eastern tracks through the foothills of Mount
Rainier using antique train equipment. The primary emphasis of the Mount Rainier
Scenic Railroad’s historic collection is logging railroad equipment. The Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad has grown
since 1980 from being a one locomotive railroad to the world’s only rail
heritage group with one of each type of logging locomotive in working
order.
Geared locomotives were built for power, not for speed, and
were popular with logging companies who had to move heavy trains up and down
grades safely. Four types of logging
locomotives were utilized in the early twentieth century: the common rod
engine, the Shay, the Heisler, and the Climax locomotives. The rod configuration has steam pistons which
actuate rods attached to the wheels which, in-turn, provide locomotion. The Shay configured geared-locomotive had two
or more pistons that are mounted perpendicular to the boiler. Instead of actuating rods for locomotion, the
pistons turned a crankshaft which ran the length of the engine on one side and engaged
each of the wheels with a crown gear. The
Heisler configured geared-locomotive always had two pistons cradling the boiler
and is mounted to a central axel. This
central axel was attached to the locomotive wheels much like a modern
truck. The rarest of the logging
locomotives is the Climax configured geared-locomotive. Climax locomotives have pistons that flank
the boiler at a 45-degree angle. These
pistons turn a flywheel which is connected to a central axel, thus providing
locomotion. All of these geared
locomotives are rare but there are only three Climax engines that can be seen today
in working order.
Eventually economic development led to the need for further
rail activity on the sparsely used Tacoma Eastern. The Boeing Company, with plants all along
Puget Sound, finally submitted to political pressure at the Federal, State and
Local levels to site a production facility in Pierce County. Frederickson, a station on the old Tacoma
Eastern line, was chosen as the preferred location. Here the Boeing Company constructed a massive
aircraft wing assembly plant. The Weyerhaeuser
Corporation had no interest in restructuring its railroad for common carrier
service, but did allow a subcontractor to operate on 12 miles of track from
Tacoma Junction to Frederickson. Until
1998, rail operations by the contractor were commonly referred to as simply the
Boeing Train. Weyerhaeuser ceased all
rail operations in the south Puget Sound basin by 1992 and began selling off
segments of the former Tacoma Eastern Railroad to the City of Tacoma.
In November of 1998, with the purchase of the railroad
complete, contracts with the private rail operators were cancelled. Now the responsibility for operating and
marketing the line fell to the City of Tacoma’s
railroad: the Tacoma Municipal Belt Line Railway. With the addition of the former Tacoma
Eastern right-of-way, the City of Tacoma re-organized its railroad corporation and shortened its name to simply “Tacoma
Rail”. Since 1998, many miles of track
have been rehabilitated and the number of rail customers has increased. In corporate literature, such as press
releases and time tables, the former Tacoma Eastern is referred to as “The
Mountain Division”. Today, Tacoma Rail
trains traverse the steep slopes of the Tacoma Eastern gulch bound for
Fredrickson with car loads of lumber, aluminum, steel pipe, heavy machinery and
grain. On alternate days, the train
returns with aluminum briquettes, cedar fencing and siding.
Future Plans
In an effort to reduce our carbon footprint and alleviate
traffic and parking congestion, plans are in the works to re-introduce
passenger excursion service from Tacoma to Mount Rainier National Park. America’s most exclusive railroad the Grand
Lux, frequents the line during summer months taking lucky passengers to
Eatonville where they can detrain for luxury coach tours of Mount Rainier or
Northwest Trek.
References:
Anderson,
Lawrence D. In the Shadow of the Mountain. Self Published. (2007).
Catton, Theodore. Wonderland: Administrative History of Mt. Rainier National Park. National Park Service (1996).
Cox, Thomas R. Mills and Markets. University of Washington Press
(1974).
Dilgard, David. Mill Town Footlights. Self Published (2001).
Engle, Pearl and Jeannette Hlavin. History of the Tacoma Eastern Area. Self
Published (1954).
Felt, Margaret E. The Enterprising Mister Murray. Caxton Publishing (1978).
French, Chauncey D. Railroadman. MacMillan Company (1938).
Friday, Chris. Organizing Asian American Labor. Temple University Press (1994).
Hines, Walker D. War History
of American Railroads. Yale University (1928).
Holter, Russell and Jesse Clark McAbee. Rails
To Paradise: The History of the Tacoma Eastern Railroad 1890-1919. Rails To
Paradise, Inc. (2005).
Hunt, Herbert. History of Tacoma Washington. S. J. Clarke Publishing (1916).
Ott, John S. The Story of the Tacoma Municipal Belt Line Railway. Tacoma Public Utilities (1996).
Ranger, Dan. Pacific Coast Shay. Golden West (1964).
Reese, Gary F. Origins
of Pierce County Place Names. R&M Press (1989).
Telewski, Frank W. and Scott D. Barrett. Logging
Railroads of Weyerhaeuser’s Vail-McDonald Operation. Oso Publishing (2005).
Thompson, Dennis B., et al. The Climax Locomotive. Oso Publishing (2002).
Wood, Charles R. and Dorothy M. Milwaukee Road West. Superior Publishing
(1972).
