Steam & Excursion > The First Train Into Any Town Is A Big Deal Especially This One!

As railroads expanded through the country there were many celebrations as new rail lines arrived in towns previously isolated from this rail network.  By the early 19th century most of the rail line had already been built and these celebrations became fewer and fewer.  However, on occasion they did still occur.

In September 1924 the Union Pacific finally completed one of their last rail expansion in the West when they completed their Burns Branch from Vale, Oregon all the way to Burns, Oregon a distance of some 150 miles.  The primary reason for this late-built rail line was the anticipated opening of a huge timber sale by the U.S. Forest Service that promised to be a supply for decades to come of wood products leaving the small town of Burns in Eastern Oregon.  For the first few years until the timber sale finally came to fruition in 1930, the Burns Branch hauled predominantly agricultural products.

In this photo we see the arrival of the first passenger train to the town of Burns and the crowds of locals that have come out to mark this event.  They could not haved guessed at the time that floods in the mid-1980's coupled with dwindling timber supply would see this branch town up and abandoned by the late 1980's.  For now, however, let the celebrations begin!

Martin



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/16 03:18 by LoggerHogger.

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That would be abandoned in the early nineties.

Out

UP stopped service because of flooding in March 1984....lots of talk but that was the end of it. Eastern end of the line is still in service.
Roger Beckett

Should be noted that UP stopped its construction when it reached Crane, Oregon, thirty miles southeast of Burns, in 1916.  The line west from Ontario was to be part of a joint UP-SP mainline across Oregon, part of Harriman's grand plans to weld his two big western railroads into a single system, a dream that died with Harriman and the U.S. Justice Department's success in 1913 in forcing UP to sell its stake in SP.  While SP stopped building its part of the line immediately, UP continued blasting west through the Malheur River canyon for another three years, finally stopping at Crane.  I suspect UP stopped there because it would not have realized any additional traffic had it continued another thirty miles to Burns. 

As Martin noted, the Crane to Burns trackage came about because of the Bear Valley Timber Sale, which at 890 million board feet of lumber on 67,400 acres was one of the largest single timber sales the U.S. Forest Service ever offered.  The sale came with several conditions, one of the most important being a requirement the successful bidder build 80 miles of common carrier railroad, extending from Crane through Burns to Seneca.  The first round of bidding yielded no offers, but the second produced two bids, one from the Brooks-Scanlon Lumber Company at $2.00 per thousand board feet and the second from lumberman Fred Herrick at $2.80 per thousand board feet.  USFS awarded the sale to Herrick, who started work on the sale in 1923, with the Crane to Burns section being the first order of business.  UP agreed to furnish equipment and materials to Herrick to build the line and to purchase it from Herrick upon its completion, and as such it was actually Herrick's men who built the last thirty miles upon which the UP train in the photograph operated.

Herrick's two companies, the Fred Herrick Lumber Company and the Malheur Railroad, then started constructing the large sawmill just south of Burns and the Burns to Seneca railroad.  However, the glutted pine lumber market of the middle 1920s caused a crash in lumber prices and hampered Herrick's cash flow, which significantly impacted his ability to finance construction.  Work slowed to a crawl, and patience with Herrick from all quarters eventually ran out, resulting in a full blown Congressional investigation into the sale and USFS cancelling Herrick's contract at the end of 1927.  USFS readvertised the sale in mid-1928, at which time the Edward Hines Lumber Company from Chicago won the contract.  Hines purchased Herrick's partially completed sawmill and railroad and rushed both through to completion, with the sawmill finally going into full operation on May 8, 1930.  

Thanks for posting the photo...

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV   

Thanks for the additional history, Jeff. Surely, there is more to the story with the timber opration coming to fruitation right at the start of the Depression?

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/16 10:29 by wabash2800.

Pure coincidence- and incredibly bad timing- is why Hines ended up firing up their sawmill when they did.  And they suffered mightily for it. 

Edward Hines launched his company in 1892, initially as a chain of lumber yards around Chicago.  Protecting and ensuring a steady supply of lumber for the retail yards is what launched Hines into the manufacturing end of the business, initially with sawmills in Wisconsin and Minnesota.  Hines went south in the early 1900s, specifically to Mississippi.  Hines had been one of the early companies showing interest in the Bear Valley sale when the U.S. Forest Service had started putting the sale together in the very early 1920s, but when the agency put out the call for bids in 1922 the company had its hands full elsewhere and was not in a position to take on a new project, especially one as big and capital intensive as the Bear Valley sale.  However, by the time the USFS readvertised the sale in 1928 Hines faced the imminent closure of two of its biggest sawmill operations, specifically the Edward Hines Yellow Pine Trustees in Barth and Kiln, Mississippi, and the Virginia & Rainy Lakes operations in Minnesota.  Hines needed new sawmill operations to replace the output of these two operations, which they found in Burns. 

Hines initially operated the Oregon operations as the Edward Hines Western Pine Company.  Hines spent in the neighborhood of $7 million in 1928 and 1929 to complete the sawmill and railroad, but even with that had to ask the USFS for one minor time extension on commencing operations.  As you noted, Hines ended up launching the operations right in the teeth of the Depression, and poor sales and debt load incurred with setting up the Oregon operations quickly forced the entire Hines organization into receivership, and the organization had to fight hard to keep the trustees from pulling the plug on the entire Oregon venture.  A reorganization effected in 1934 resulted in the merger of Edward Hines Western Pine into the Edward Hines Lumber Company.  Recovering lumber markets actually allowed the Oregon operations to turn their first profit in 1934, though really firm financial footing would not be obtained until the start of World War II. 

Hines continued operating the sawmill until 1983, when the company decided to get out of the sawmill business entirely and refocus itself on the retail lumber yards.  Snow Mountain Pine purchased the Hines sawmill and the Oregon & Northwestern Railroad, while the John Day Lumber Company purchased Hine's Grant County operations, including a sawmill in John Day and a planing mill in Seneca.  The flooding of Malheur and Harney lakes forced UP to cease operations to Burns in March 1984.  Snow Mountain Pine continued operating the sawmill, briefly enjoying rail service again from 1990-1992 thanks to the Oregon Eastern Division of Wyoming/Colorado Railroad reopening the line to Burns, but SMP and the other shippers could not get enough of their business back onto the rails to support it.  Snow Mountain Pine finally closed the Hines mill down in 1995, with most of the equipment resold for use in Russia.  

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV 

Impressive explanation of how the UP arrived in Burns, Jeff. Thanks for the detail!

Lee Hower - Sacramento

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