This restoration has Great Northern & SP&S engines heading a BN train in the Burlington Northern yard at Tacoma, WA in April 1972.
This image works as a great representation of three former Pacific Northwest major rail lines that all became merged together in 1971 and subsequently became the newly formed Burlington Northern Railroad.
The train is headed by a Great Northern engine followed by the locomotive from the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway followed by two boxcars from the Northern Pacific Railroad. It was the end of an era for the three PNW railroads but the start of a new one for the BN.
This restoration from the original negative shows a depression-era woman walking on Southern Pacific railroad tracks between semaphore signals either in Southern Oregon or Northern California in 1931.
This restoration shows an abandoned residence & car, one of the last buildings that remained standing in the once-thriving company town of Bradwood, Oregon as seen in April 1981.
The town was the company town of the Bradley-Woodward Lumber Company, and was incorporated in July 1930. It’s name was a derivative of the company name. Shortly after the mill began operations, work began on creating the town.
Bradwood was a location on the Columbia River situated between the towns of Knappa & Wauna, Oregon, about 22 miles east of Astoria.
With a shipping port and served by the SP&S railroad, Bradwood became the terminus for the company’s private railroad bringing down logs felled on Nicolai Mountain, milling them at the company mill & shipping finished products out by ship & rail. Lumber from the mill was used to construct the houses & businesses that were built to accommodate the millworkers & their families.
The mill and town thrived during the depression years and throughout World War II but afterward the once abundant timber stands dwindled and the mill ceased operations of it’s privately owned logging railroad. The mill continued on in operations with logs brought in by trucks & purchased log rafts for awhile. At some point, the entire operation was sold to Pope & Talbot Co.
In June 1962 the decision was made to close down the mill and a year later, on June 25th, 1963 the mill & entire town was sold at auction into private hands. Some of the buildings were moved or deconstructed but the rest were simply abandoned.
A major fire in 1965 destroyed the mill & much of the remaining buildings, and another fire in 1984 took care of what buildings remained including the house pictured here.
Today, the property is privately held, no structures or roads remain, and there is no evidence that the little community of Bradwood ever existed. In the mid-2000s, the site was considered for a proposed terminal for receiving liquefied natural gas (LNG). Protests & bankruptcies however derailed that plan and today the site is unimproved with posted “No Trespassing” signs.
In this restoration from December of 1962, a small sliver of late afternoon sunlight highlights the surf along the south-central Washington State coastline.
This restored view, looking toward the east, is of a torn up Broadway St. in coastal tourist town Seaside, OR during the widening of the sidewalks in January 1983.
The renovation was a decision by the city to encourage more tourism by foot traffic while reducing automotive congestion.
Most of the businesses in the photo are now gone but a few stalwarts remain. It’s interesting seeing Seaside’s modern-day “Main St.” as a dirt road…something not seen since the early days of the 1890’s when it was known as the Clam-Shell Road” & later “Bridge Street.”
This restoration from the original negative shows the Pacific Coast Steamship SANTA ROSA broken in two a day after running aground near Saddle Rock at Point Arquello, CA on July 7, 1911. Smoke from bonfires set on the beach by rescuers still floats by the dead ship.
The 326 foot ship was built at the John Roach & Sons shipyard in Chester PA in 1883 for the Oregon Improvement Co. at Portland, Oregon. The ship was not immediately placed in service as it was the center of a dispute between Oregon Improvement & the Oregon Railway & Navigation Co. By court order, the dispute was resolved in May 1887 & the ship was handed over to Oregon Improvement Co.
The sleek 2416 ton vessel was built with a shallow 13.5 foot draft to be able to navigate shallower river & inland ports in the Oregon & California regions. At a running speed of 16.5 knots, the Santa Rosa was one of the largest & quicker ocean-going steamers to make port at Portland & Astoria during her 10 year service for Oregon Improvement. Her normal route was running along the Oregon-California coastline to San Francisco.
In 1897, the ship was acquired by the Pacific Coast Steamship Co. and placed on the Seattle-San Francisco coastwise route. She ran comfortably & reliably, only being taken out service for a time in 1904 for an overhaul & the removal of her 2nd funnel. Afterward, she remained in the coastwise trade mostly running from San Francisco to San Diego and smaller California ports until July 1911.
On the early morning of July 7, the ship was steaming southward from San Francisco to San Diego hugging the California coastline in a heavy fog carrying 78 tons of cargo and about 200 passengers. At the helm was J.O. Faria, in relief of the ship’s regular captain, who did not make the voyage.
The headland of the Point Arguello/Point Conception area presented a special danger. It is here that the California coastline makes a sharp change in direction from north-south to west-east. Ships here must make the course correction to follow the coastline, avoid the shoals of San Miguel Island, and safely steer into the Santa Barbara Channel.
Around the turn of the century, captains had only a series of three lights to guide them through this part of the trip, at Point Sur, Point Sal, and Point Arguello however the gloom of a foggy night could render these lights virtually invisible to searching eyes. Radio navigational aids were years in the future.
At approximately 12AM, Captain Faria retired for some sleep and turned over responsibility of the vessel to Second Officer E.J. Heuson, whose orders were to follow a series of lighthouse beacons along the coast, and when they reached the Point Arguello Lighthouse, turn east-southeast and head toward Santa Barbara. Faria later stated that, before retiring, he also left orders to be awakened once the Point Sal light was sighted, so he would be ready to make the course adjustment off Arguello and head the ship into the channel.
Around 1 AM, the second officer was relieved by Third Officer Edward Thompson. In the fog the crew missed the Point Sal beacon, & mistook a bright spotlight being used by a railroad maintenance crew on the tracks that ran above the shoreline for the Point Arguello light, and as a result the course adjustment was not made, and Captain Faria was awakened at about 3:15AM when the Santa Rosa ran aground near the outlet of Honda Creek, just north of the Point Arguello lighthouse Thompson notified the Captain only moments before the impact.
The ship was approximately two miles off course.
Passing trains noticed the ship & word of the grounding quickly spread around Santa Barbara after the trains arrived at the depot. The result brought a rush of people heading to the beach to witness the event as well as bringing supplies to assist the passengers.
Meanwhile, Captain Faria used the newly installed innovation of the wireless to contact the ship’s owners, and it was decided by the company they should sit tight until later in the day in the hopes that the high tide would float the ship free. At that point, the seas were calm and the ship appeared largely undamaged.
Three ships soon arrived to assist in trying to stabilize & refloat the ship. At about 9 a.m., the steamships Centralia and Helen Drew began attaching steel cables to the Santa Rosa in an effort to stabilize it while the steamer Argyle stood by. Simultaneously, a crew from shore readied their equipment to retrieve passengers. Aboard ship, the passengers were growing anxious and elected representatives to address their concerns with the captain. Their collective decision was to leave by lifeboats and board the waiting steamships.
According to passenger E.K. Ross in a New York Times article dated July 8, the sea was “quiet as a millpond, and it would have been an easy task for the crew to put us ashore. But Captain Faria said he had orders by wireless from his company to keep the people aboard.” The company believing that the ship could be refloated on the high tide. Capt. Faria then informed Point Arguello’s lifesaving crew that his ship was in no immediate danger and dismissed the need for their services however the lifesaving crew remained on scene regardless.
From mid-morning through the afternoon messages were exchanged between Capt. Faria & G.H. Higbee, Assistant General Manager of the Pacific Coast Steamship Co. about what should be done & debating compensation issues with the ships standing by. Amid the prolonged wireless exchanges and price haggling, the sea grew impatient. In the afternoon, the wind and waves intensified, making the safe transfer of passengers among the ships riskier.
The afternoon saw the other steamships successfully secure wire cables to the Santa Rosa and had maneuvered the vessel’s stern to face the waves. At about 5PM, the waves became rougher & larger and the rowboat which had been carrying the cables to the Santa Rosa was hit by a large wave and thrown against the ship, destroying the boat & throwing the men into the water. People on the Santa Rosa began to realize the power of the surf & began putting on lifejackets. An eyewitness account in the San Francisco Call, said things changed quickly: “The passengers were huddled on the after deck (and) the ship was pounding heavily. Suddenly with a crack like a rifle shot the line aft parted. The vessel at once swung around into the trough of the sea, which came surging over the stern. The terrified passengers made a rush forward, the captain with them, and as they fled toward the forecastle (bow), (passenger) Mrs. Campbell heard the commander exclaim, “I wish to God I had followed my own judgment and paid no attention to the orders from the city.”
The ship was now being pummeled broadside and a large crack had developed in the hull just aft of the funnel. A lifeboat was dispatched to shore with a crew of five to run a line for a breeches buoy lifesavings device. The boat quickly flipped over, drowning the Santa Rosa’s 2nd Officer E.J. Heuson and seamen Fred Johnson, John P, Siffer & E.W. Jebsen, all from San Francisco. The fifth seaman, Oscar Patterson near exhausted, was washed ashore & survived.
Around 5:30PM, a witness on the beach reported: “I returned to the scene of the wreck in time to witness the breaking up of the vessel. At 6PM, everyone had their eyes fixed on the ship, and suddenly, without any previous warning, there was a loud report and we saw splinters of wood fly off the bulwarks. Then came a grinding crash, and then the midship section, which had been balanced on the sandbar, was seen to rise several feet. The stern fell away from the bow; the latter remaining high and dry, while the former seemed to slip back into the water. There was a wild scramble for the bow when the ship’s back broke, not a passenger had been sent ashore.”
Panic now set in among the passengers as lifeboats were hastily lowered into the surf. It wasn’t until 5:45 p.m. that the first boat arrived through the breakers with a cable that was used to secure a breeches buoy from the middle of the foremast to a railroad trestle above the beach. A rope cargo net was attached to a pulley on the cable that transferred 3-4 people at a time from the ship sometimes dropping the net in & out of the water. Some of the boats that followed capsized, throwing their occupants into the swirling waters and onto the rocks. Miraculously, not a single passenger would lose their life thanks to the heroic work of the lifesaving crew & ship’s crew. But many passengers were soaked & injured and encountered near-death experiences, which they recounted in the newspapers. The last passengers were finally put ashore by 10:30 p.m.
The survivors were gathered around bonfires made on the beach to warm & administer aid to them and then transferred to specially dispatched rescue trains to take them into Santa Barbara, Lompoc & Surf.
The public outrage over the disaster was waged publicly in the weeks before the formal inquiry and trial. To this mix was added the finger pointing by owners and employees as each argued their action or inaction in the media.
Formal charges were levied against the owners and the crew of the Santa Rosa in the form of criminal negligence.
During the open door inquiry, testimony was heard from the assistant general manager of Pacific Coast about his message to Capt. Faria: “That message has been misunderstood. The thought of quibbling over the price of transferring the passengers to the Centralia and getting them to Port San Luis never entered my head. I have been in the freight department of this company for nearly 30 years, and my habit has been to get figures for everything I buy, so that I may keep my accounts in shipshape. … I wanted the total cost only, not any particular price. To say that I ordered Capt. Faria to dicker … is ridiculous.”
Capt. Ericsson from the Centralia was then asked about Capt. Faria’s actions: “At 3 o’clock in the afternoon I received a message from (Faria). It was in answer to one I had sent him asking him to wait until 5 or 6 o’clock before making another attempt to get off the reef. … I could not understand his answer, which was, ‘Please wait until I hear from my company.’ Why he had to wait for word from his company when there was a favorable opportunity to pull him into deep water was a puzzle to me.”
To Captain Faria’s defense he testified at the inquiry that he attributed the accident to his subordinates failing to follow the orders he issued to Second Officer Heuson who was relieved by Third Officer Edward Thompson and had the bridge when the vessel grounded, which he said would have brought him on deck early and revealed the ship’s true position allowing him to change course. Third Officer Thompson denied ever receiving the order that should have been passed on by Heuson & as the second officer died in the lifeboat capsizing, the proof died along with him & willl always remain a matter of dispute.
In the end, Faria and Thompson were found solely responsible for the disaster. The principle violated was that the captain is in supreme command of his vessel and to accept no orders from his company or anyone else. Surprisingly, the punishment for both men was just a suspension of their licenses for 12 months.
As for the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, it was found that the wireless messages were mere “suggestions” rather than orders. This didn’t sit well with the San Francisco Call newspaper: “The company was whitewashed, no criticism being offered of the practice of hugging the shore in making coastwise voyages, and no comment being made upon the flood of wireless telegrams, haggling over price of rescue, that were hurled at Captain Faria from the office in the city after the vessel struck. All the blame is placed upon the shoulders of the two officers.”
After the trial, the matter was forgotten and the ship settled into her grave beneath the waves & into history.
Four men and a ship were needless casualties of a foggy but calm sea.
Finally have a chance to post a new restoration. Unfortunately due to family medical issues, I have very little time available anymore to dedicate to the time required to do these restorations but, I will continue to do so as time allows.
Lifeguards Clarke Thompson (left) & Wallace Hug pose in the car next to their associate St. Bernard lifeguard, BRUNO, in this photo from 1936 on the Seaside, OR beach
In this restored image is seen the Eldred Rock Lighthouse, in Lynn Canal between Haines, Skagway & Juneau Alaska as seen on September 20, 2023.
The lighthouse is situated on a rocky 2.4 acre island and its first lightkeeper was Nils Peter Adamson, who was promoted from assistant keeper of Desdemona Sands Lighthouse on the Columbia River at Astoria, Oregon.
In response to many Klondike Gold Rush shipwrecks in this vicinity of Lynn Canal, Eldred Lighthouse along with eleven others were commissioned between 1902-1906.
Completed in 1906, Eldred Rock was the last manned lighthouse built in Lynn Canal, & it is also the last surviving with it’s original structures & the only one partially built of concrete. Like many of the early northern lighthouses, Eldred Rock consisted of an octagonal tower protruding from the center of an octagonal building with a sloping roof. The building at Eldred Rock, however, was markedly larger than the others and had two stories instead of one. The bottom story was built of concrete, while the second story and tower were wood.
The fog signal, a furnace, storage tanks for fuel and water, work rooms, and a bathroom were located on the bottom floor, while the three keepers had eight rooms of living space on the upper story. A wooden boathouse, built 300 feet north of the lighthouse, was also part of the lighthouse reservation, and a carpenter shop was later added between these two structures. A tramway ran between the boathouse and lighthouse and extended to low water in both a northeasterly and southwesterly direction from the boathouse.
A fourth-order Fresnel lens was placed in the lantern room, near the top of the fifty-six-foot lighthouse, at a focal plane of ninety-one feet above the surrounding water & was seen for 15 miles. This unique lens, crafted in Paris by Barbier, Benard & Turenne, consists of two bull’s-eye panels – one about four feet in diameter and the opposing one a smaller, fourteen-inch panel. A sheet of ruby glass was placed between the light source and the larger prism, causing the revolving lens to produce alternating red and white flashes of roughly equal intensity. Every five hours, the keepers had to wind up a 135-pound weight that descended in the tower, causing the lens to rotate once every twenty seconds.
One of the primary drivers to building a lighthouse here was the wreck of the CLARA NEVADA steamship, which ran aground on the northern end (right side of photo) of Eldred Rock on February 5th, 1898. The ex-coastal survey vessel was loaded with over 100 Klondike gold miners & crew and a reported near 900 lbs. of gold along with illegal dynamite returning to Seattle from Skagway in 90 mph hurricane-fore winds
As the winds & waves drove the 3-masted ship into the rock, she burst into flames and sank, claiming, it was reported at the time all of the passengers & crew. It was assumed that the ship’s boilers exploded upon impact. It’s also believed that hundreds of pounds of gold were lost in the disaster as the gold was never recovered. However, suspicions grew after divers examined the wreck about a week after the accident and to their surprise discovered that the boilers had not exploded & were intact but saw three blackened holes in the boiler room and & large blackened hole in the side of the ship, evidence of dynamite explosions. Also, weeks after the accident, a skiff belonging to the ship was found hidden in a grove of trees on the mainland. A few members of the crew likely escaped the disaster that night, as it was later discovered that C.H. Lewis, captain of the Clara Nevada, had resumed his profession on riverboats in Alaska’s interior and that the ship’s fireman, a man well known for his run-ins with the law, was subsequently employed in Nome’s gold fields.
Nothing was conclusively proven & it was written off as a weather-related casualty.
On the evening of March 12, 1908, a violent gale struck Eldred Rock. When assistant keeper John Currie ventured out of the lighthouse the next morning, to his astonishment he saw a ship stranded on the northern end of the island. As though still tormented by her untimely demise, the powerful storm had brought the CLARA NEVADA up from her watery grave, just days after the tenth anniversary of her sinking. Keeper Currie didn’t have much time to examine the resurrected vessel for the storm picked up again that evening, returning the ship to the bottom of the canal.
Seemingly still haunting the island, on February 26, 1910, John Currie and John Silander, the two assistant keepers at Eldred Rock, set out about 5:30AM in the station’s launch for Point Sherman lighthouse. With light snow falling, the assistants left Point Sherman at about 4 p.m. the following day for the return to Eldred with supplies. When his assistants hadn’t shown up at Eldred Rock after an absence of three days, Keeper Adamson rowed out to the ship JUSTINA GRAY to put out notice of the overdue men. Two days later, the station’s missing launch was located “with all gear gone excepting mast, sail & anchor.”
Adamson, who was tormented by the presumed drowning of his assistants, later wrote: “I myself am unable to account for any accident that could have happened to them as there was no wind to speak of and a smooth sea & in my opinion they should have reached home easily by 8 p.m., though they had an ebb tide to contend with.”
For a month, Adamson searched the waters of Lynn Canal for his assistants when time and weather permitted. At night, he would often rise in his sleep, stand at his bedroom window, and call out their names – a nightmare that continued the remainder of his life. To try & escape the tragedy, Adamson resigned as keeper at Eldred Rock on January 5th, 1911 and moved back to Astoria, Oregon. He returned to lighthouse service the following summer accepting an appointment at Coos Bay Oregon, far away from his last tormented former assignment.
Due to post-war inflation and technological advances, Eldred Rock Light Station was unmanned and downgraded to a minor light in 1973. The structures suffered for lack of maintenance and fell into disrepair but, fortunately, Eldred Rock Lighthouse Preservation Association was formed in 2014 to acquire, rehabilitate, and promote the lighthouse. In 2019, the Alaska Association for Historic Preservation awarded a grant to the preservation association that helped fund a historic structure report to guide the rehabilitation of the property. In April 2020, the Coast Guard Civil Engineering Unit awarded a five-year lease of Eldred Rock Lighthouse to the preservation association. The lease allowed the association to access the property and begin restoration work.
The preservation association has removed and encapsulated asbestos and lead paint in the lighthouse, & continues ongoing restoration work to preserve the historical buildings on the island.
This restoration of an original damaged photo shows turn-of-the-20th Century Seaside Oregon photographer William John Montag posing in his studio against the backdrop he painted of the ocean & Pacific Pier in Seaside, OR after painting a sign advertising his business c1908-9.
Montag was one of the most prolific early photographers of Seaside and the North Coast area. Originally starting with a wagon and tent, he established himself early on as a photographic chronicler of life & people in the coastal region.
Originally establishing his studio in his residence in Seaside along what is now Broadway in the late 1900’s, Montag & his studio became a popular attraction for tourists and local residents wanting their families captured on film in either a formal setting or in swimming attire in front of one of the hand-painted backdrops he created in his studio. Around 1914, he opened his commercial studio in the Oates Baths building (Natatorium) at the turnaround on the boardwalk (which became the Promenade in 1921).
Montag also took his camera outside his studio capturing beach events like sand sculptures, soldiers from nearby Fort Rilea, bathing beauties, various buildings & tragedies like the Seaside Fire of 1912 but he is arguably best known for his many studio portraits of tourists & local families.
William continued his business until the late 1930’s when ill health compelled him to sell. With the death of his wife, Maud, in 1939, William’s health further deteriorated becoming mostly bed-ridden over the next several years. Finally on September 29, 1943 he could take no more & fatally shot himself in his bedroom. He was 70 years old & is buried at Ocean View cemetery in Warrenton, Oregon.
In this restoration, NP6700C heads the North Coast Ltd., a passenger train that ran from Seattle to Chicago, Illinois, stopped at the depot in Ellensburg, Washington on Thursday, June 13, 1968.
The depot was built in 1910 & in railroad service until October, 1981 when the last passenger train left the station. After that, passenger trains (then running as Amtrak) were rerouted thru Wenatchee and the Ellensburg depot was closed.
After the Northern Pacific, Great Northern & Chicago Burlington & Quincy railroads were merged to become the Burlington Northern Railroad in March of 1970, the North Coast Limited continued in operation until May 1, 1971 when Amtrak, which was created by Congress in 1970 to preserve some level of intercity passenger rail service while enabling private rail companies to exit the money-losing passenger rail business, took over running it’s train, the Amtrak Empire Builder, on the Ellensburg tracks.
Since it’s closure, the depot fell into disrepair & a group of volunteers called “Friends of the Northern Pacific Train Depot” acquired the building & renovated it. It is now occupied by a private non-profit organization called “HopeSource” that addresses the needs of low-wealth households and provides emergency and sustained support to thousands of families in the Upper and Lower Kittitas County.
The NP6700C locomotive was built in 1955 as the NP7007A. It was later renumbered 6700C and after the BN merger it was changed again to BN9802 for passenger service then BN768 for freight service. The engine was retired in August 1982 & was traded to GE Locomotive for credit on a new locomotive.
Yesterdays Trails 