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.”
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.
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.
This restoration shows the Bradwood Store, 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, 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 railroad. The mill continued on in operations with logs brought in by trucks & purchased log rafts for awhile. At some point, the operation was sold to Pope & Talbot Co.
In June 1962 a 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 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 Bradwood Store.
Today, the property is privately held, no structures or roads remain, and there is no evidence that the little town 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.
These days, when people talk about the shipwreck on the Oregon Coast, the PETER IREDALE immediately snaps to mind. But, 23 years before the PETER IREDALE became an Oregon landmark, the barque CAIRNSMORE made her mark on the coast…very near to the same spot the IREDALE would come to rest.
In this restoration, the three masts of the Scottish barque CAIRNSMORE stand as a tombstone to their ship, reflecting where the ship ran aground and sank into the soft sands of Clatsop Beach, near Fort Stevens on the North Oregon coast as seen in this photo circa 1895.
The CAIRNSMORE was an iron-hulled cargo barque built by John Reid & Co. of Port Glasgow, Scotland. She was launched on July 1, 1867 and was 975 GRT and almost 200 feet long. She sailed for the Nicholson & McGill Co. of Liverpool, England.
On Monday, May 28, 1883, the ship departed London with a full cargo of 7500 barrels of cement & heavy machinery bound for the Balfour-Guthrie Co. in Portland, OR. Sailing up the coastline, the ship had good conditions until about 200 miles off the mouth of the Columbia thence running in continuing heavy fog & smoke from wildfires burning in Washington.
On the evening of Sept 26th, Capt. John Gibbs, unable to make any bearings due to the fog had a sounding made to determine the depth of the water but before he heard the results of that, he heard the sound of the surf on the beach & immediately ordered crew aloft to haul in the sails. Unfortunately, the ship was so heavily laden with her cargo and already in the breakers she was too slow to respond and at 11:00 PM, the ship impacted the beach with a thud in heavy swells. Neither Captain or crew could see land in the fog & smoke until the next morning. Through the night & next morning the heavy swells & rough conditions pushed the CAIRNSMORE further up & into the sand. In the afternoon of the 27th, the ship started listing to port & the captain & crew made the decision to abandon the ship. The boats were lowered and the crew rowed them seaward to avoid being capsized by the breakers. Around 6AM on the 28th, the boats were spotted by the coastal passenger steamer ‘QUEEN OF THE PACIFIC” and taken aboard. All of the crew were delivered safely to Astoria arriving around 3PM.
Attempts were briefly made to try & refloat the vessel but were stopped when it was discovered water had breached the hold and penetrated the barrels of cement and they had started to harden. Efforts were then shifted to salvaging everything else which was largely successful. The CAIRNSMORE settled into her grave.
Although other photos exist showing the masts protruding from the sand, this is a rare view showing the perspective of the wreck against the background of Tillamook Head & what is now the Cove area of Seaside, Oregon. The wreck lies completely sunk in the sands just barely north of her more well known sailing mate, PETER IREDALE but in an area that is now overgrown with trees, shrubs, grasses & wetland near Coffenbury Lake.
During the South Jetty construction at the mouth of the Columbia River (1885-1939), sand dredged from the construction moved southward down the coastline and extended shorelines farther out into the surfline burying & extending beaches with more & more sand. As it did so in the CAIRNSMORE’s case, as the ship continued to settle over time the “beach” built up around the wreck and new shore growth took root over time building up the dune areas present today. The IREDALE has remained on the beach partially due to her wrecking in 1906, 23 years after the CAIRNSMORE & 21 years after the jetty construction had started. By the time the IREDALE wrecked, the beach had already been extended farther out from the sand buildup from the construction.
Yesterdays Trails 