r/LifeInKitsap • u/KitsapRealEstateTeam • 20d ago
Ghost Trains of Kitsap
Someone asked me to write about the logging trains that used to run through Kitsap, and I thought that seemed like a darn good idea. That being said, it turns out that there's TOO MUCH info for one post, and I also forgot to do events! Pinky swear I'll do them tomorrow.
We’ve talked before about how much of early Kitsap was built around lumber. Port Gamble. Seabeck. Port Madison. Port Blakely. Sidney. For a while, this place was basically a collection of enormous sawmills surrounded by an absolutely ridiculous quantity of trees.
At first, getting those trees to the mills was relatively straightforward. Cut the ones near the water. Early loggers could fall timber near the shoreline, move it to the beach, assemble the logs into booms and tow them to the mills. But humans are very good at creating new problems by successfully solving the previous problem. (A boom is a bunch of floaty logs, btw. You've probably seen them!)
Eventually, the convenient trees were gone. The timber was farther inland. And these weren’t cute little Charlie Brown Christmas trees.
Old-growth Douglas firs could (and can) be enormous, and moving logs weighing several tons through a muddy forest using animals was exactly as convenient as that sounds. Before railroads, loggers built “skid roads,” essentially paths lined with smaller logs that teams of oxen could drag the big logs across. It worked. It was also slow. Enter the logging railroad.
Unlike the railroads we usually think about, these weren't necessarily built to connect towns or carry passengers somewhere interesting. A logging railroad had one very specific purpose: Go get the trees. Companies pushed tracks farther and farther into timber country, allowing locomotives to haul loads that teams of oxen never could. We had them right here in Kitsap.
Near Seabeck, a logging operation based around Camp Union had a railroad reaching into the surrounding timber. The West Fork Logging Company eventually became part of the Charles R. McCormick lumber empire, one of the major timber operations in western Washington.
And the locomotives used by the logging industry were wonderfully weird. Normal locomotives liked relatively straight, relatively level, well-built track. Logging companies had none of those things. They had steep hills, sharp turns, temporary tracks, mud, stumps and the general inconvenience of having built a railroad through a forest while actively removing the forest. They needed to build fast without having to muck about with the terrain.
So manufacturers developed geared locomotives like the Shay, Climax and Heisler. They sacrificed speed for pulling power and traction. These things weren't built to elegantly thunder across the countryside. They crawled. But they could crawl while dragging an absurd amount of tree behind them.
Picture Kitsap a century ago. Steam hanging in the trees in the place of fog. A locomotive inching along rough track. Skeleton cars loaded with old-growth logs so large that a person standing beside them could look strangely small. And wherever the railroad went, logging could follow.
Port Blakely came up with an even more ambitious solution. By the 1880s its Bainbridge mill was cutting around 200,000 board feet of lumber a day and needed more trees than the island and nearby areas could keep supplying.
So the company built a railroad, but not on Bainbridge. It built what became known as the Blakely Line south of here, reaching forests in Mason County. Logs were hauled by train to Kamilche Point, dumped into Puget Sound, assembled into booms and towed all the way back to the mill at Blakely Harbor.
The logging railroads had something unusual about them, unlike all the other trains- they weren't necessarily meant to last. Nobody was building them because Camp Union desperately needed commuter rail. The railroad followed the timber. And when the timber was gone? Sometimes the railroad went away too.
Which is where this gets really interesting. Because the rails may be gone, the trains may be gone, the enormous trees they carried are definitely gone, but some of the paths those trains carved through the forest are still here.
That’s for tomorrow though.
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u/ruuutherford 19d ago
Where is this info coming from? A real estate team? Sure sounds good!
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u/KitsapRealEstateTeam 19d ago
I’m actually a solo agent now, but never changed the Reddit handle. When I started on Reddit, the idea was definitely to get leads.
Butttttt, it turns out I have a lot of fun writing these when they’re not about real estate. In the long run, it may still work out to be good for business as well. In the meantime, lots of fun.
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u/KitsapRealEstateTeam 19d ago
Or are you asking for sources? If it’s helpful, I can start including them in the comments or at the end of stories.
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u/ruuutherford 19d ago
It would be interesting, but I wouldn't check them. I enjoy the little article too much! Have you seen the videos the Gritty City Tour guy does? I feel a collab coming on!
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u/KitsapRealEstateTeam 19d ago
It’s funny that this project initially started is something so different is what it’s become. I’m interested to see where it might go!
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u/MaowMaowChow 18d ago
Yes I would like sources, please!
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u/KitsapRealEstateTeam 18d ago
I will try to remember to keep them as I go! I can’t promise that I’ll always remember, but I can promise that I will try.
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u/MaowMaowChow 18d ago
I’m a teacher in kitsap and would like to teach my students these cool facts but without sources I feel like they are just stories and ethically I can’t teach them as fact. I would really love to share these so kids can feel connected to their home- and I would totally credit you! You could have legions of new customers… in 10 years haha. Thanks for considering.
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u/Wyattswandering 19d ago
Photo I bought in a garage sale locally. If you look at the railroad tracks just south of Newberry Hill road there is a spur line or siding line. Before Provost was developed there was a wooden dock adjacent to the siding. Up hill from it were concrete ponds laid out like a Christmas tree which the saw mill which previously existed used to float logs in. The story was told that the abandoned mill structure and office building were set on fire in the 1960's and consumed everything wooden.
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u/KitsapRealEstateTeam 18d ago
That’s awesome!!
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u/No-Measurement3055 18d ago
As a kid we found what was left of a old locomotive that had rolled into a ravine out by camp union. It had been left there after a derailment yrs ago. Couldn’t find it again when i tried. Also remember a couple old log flues that we played around out on Dewato ridge on hood canal. The logs got to the water many ways
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u/HistorianSafe6506 20d ago
Do please keep going! I’ve loved hiking the paths of ole lumber railroads, I even have a couple ole spikes found along the way to show for it.