Western Railroad Discussion > Logging Railroads of the Capital Forest (WA)

The Capital Forest is just southwest of Olympia, the Washington State Capital. It was crisscrossed by logging railroads into the early 1940's when the timber played out. Not much remains of the once numerous trestles in forest, which were used to train new recruits of Fort Lewis in demolition. The Primary players were the Mason County Logging Co (Bordeaux Brothers) which logged areas south of Capitol Peak. The MCL's railroad was the Black Hills & Northwestern which served mills at both Bordeaux and Malone. The Mud Bay Logging Co logged areas on the north slope of Capital Peak and dumped those logs into the Puget Sound west of Olympia. Mud Bay was a principal supplier to Weyerhaeuser's extensive mill complex at Everett.

I had to cut the map in half to get it to fit under the 300KB and still be a reasonable size.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

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Here are a couple photos of these operations to give folks an idea what the logging railroads looked like.
The first shows Mason County Logging #4 getting a drink of water. Her tender lives today and is behind another steamer about to complete a re-build. Can anyone guess which one?
The second photo is Mud Bay Logging Heisler #6 at Mud Bay Washington in 1938. Note the Gerlinger spark arrestor.
Both are photos shot by the late Harold Hill.

Martin

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Do these maps have a key/legend?
Ron W

Ted,
I've very much enjoyed your Washington history-related posts, by the way.

Casey

Ted,

Great maps. When I lived in Olympia I knew there were loads of old logging and mine right of ways around but never knew where to get the information. One of my customers in Port Angeles was a lady who had grown up in the town where the UP coal mine was south west of Olympia