Steam & Excursion > Steam Locomotives From This Company Go Way Back In This Town!

With our recent shipment of Skookum from Garibaldi, Oregon on the the Oregon Coast Railroad, let's take a moment to remember that Skookum was not the first Whitney Company locomotive to call Garibaldi home.

The town of Garibaldi was first founded in 1869 and was later Incorporated in 1946.  The Whitney Company built it's huge saw mill in Garibaldi in 1921 and founded it's logging railroad at the same time.  While the Skookum was purchased by the Whitney Company for their Blind Slough operations near Astoria, Oregon to the north of Garibaldi, the Whitney Company did base a steam locomotive in Garibaldi to make the log run from the base of the incline up the Kilchis River to the mill. 

That locomotive is shown here in Garibaldi in 1927 in this fine H.L. Arey photo.  As with the other Whitney Company locomotives, she was given a name rather than a number.  This fine engines was known on the Whitney Company as "Spark Plug".  Her heritage as a former SP 2-6-0 is obvious as is the fact that she has been left as a wood-burner by the Whitney Company.  She has acquired electric lights over her long years of service and quite addition to her spark arrestor.

Today the Whitney company is gone from Garibaldi.  The smokestack that is left was erected by the Hammond Lumber Company when they bought out the Whitney mill in 1927.  With the Skookum now headed to California for the summer, there are no Whitney Company locomotives left in Garibaldi.  At least not for the time being , anyway.

Martin



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/19 04:18 by LoggerHogger.

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