Nostalgia & History > UP's Burns OR branch: Along the Malheur River.

While following the UP line to Burns OR on Topozone, I noticed that the line goes through a very deep canyon with the Malheur River just south of Juntura. Being aware of the remoteness of this area, I'm given to speculate that this canyon might have been scenic. It's probably also a larger portion of the line that was washed out in the late 80s and early 90s in high water.

Does anyone have any comments to add to this discussion? It's also possible that this remote canyon is a desert mountain canyon but it's still very rugged like much of eastern Oregon.

Thanks!
Jim Burrill

Can't really add to the discussion but I found a few links with some info.

http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/wyco.html

http://www.abandonedrailroads.com/or_up_celatom_hope_burns.htm

As the links that stevelv provided indicate, the problem was not with a washout in a canyon. Rather, generally wet weather led Malheur and Harney lakes to grow significantly. The land in the area is quite flat, so as the lakes grew they reached out to the line to Burns and covered it. (This was the same time that the Great Salt Lake was growing, causing problems especially for the old WP line on its south shore.) These desert lakes have a history of growing and receding with wet and dry periods. The UP simply didn't seem interested in fixing the line up after the water receded, and when it was done there wasn't a lot of traffic left.

Thanks for the info, guys. It looks to me like the taxpayers took it in the shorts when the line was pulled up. Probably you could attribute the loss of rail service in Burns to the decline of logging and lumbering.

There always were some questionable practices on the part of WYCO; the line to Saratoga WY was recently abandoned and this was the last portion of track they took over from UP in this period of time. I have it on good authority that UP went after them seeking to recover costs in other locations.

I'll bet that Burns is in a serious state of decline at this time, similar to Walden CO after WYCO pulled out.

I believe that A&K or their successor recently bought the Towner Line, former MoPac from Pueblo to Towner for scrap price recently.

It was scenic...especially the more isolated area between the towns of Crane & Juntura. I went over this by motorcar a couple of times & we saw coyotes, deer, golden eagles, a badger, even a small scorpion underneath a rock that was between the rails. There were several bridges on this section, all of different construction. I remember a siding at Riverside. At that time ('86-'87), Malheur Lake was quite high. You could see this just a couple miles West of Crane where the rails just disappeared into the water. That blocked the line on that end and there was a small slide near the Tunnel @ Juntura.

Tom

I see that my High Desert Rails website has already been mentioned in this thread...I have the history of UP's Burns branch covered over four pages on the website. Those pages are:

http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/hcsrr.html
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/up.html (scroll down to Burns Branch section)
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/mrr.html
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/wyco.html

The WYCO page has already been mentioned here; the other three pages fill in the pre-WYCO history.

For the record...the STB rejected the Saratoga line abandonment last year after a major effort by the State of Wyoming and some other local interests. WYCO may have re-initiated the process, but that first effort got reversed.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Drove thru the area this summer while ferrying a Red Cross ERV doen to Little Rock, AR in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina. Just about all signs of track are gone, except near Ontario area, and there are still some of the bridges up, but some have been taken out since the last time I drove through the region in '99.

The cutting area granted by the forest service which first enticed the railroad to build to the area, had for the most part been cut over by the time that Harney Lake covered UPs tracks. No big timber sawed to lumber, no railroad worth saving.

By the time Harney lake recided, the logging railroad we all now know as the Oregon and Northwestern had been scrapped. In July 1984 I photographterd the power in the mill's enginehouse. The line to seneca had been scrapped!

Jimmy

Edited from 1982 to 1984

Jimmy- the O&NW continued running to Seneca until March 1984. The flooding of the UP Burns Branch forced the closure of that railroad, and the line came out a short time later.

http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw.html

The pictures that Jimmy took are displayed throughout the page linked to above.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

I'm sorry Jeff, in July of 1984 I, along with Jim Cooper, John Black, and Bob Black shot 3 engines of the Oregon and Northwestern in the enginehouse at Hines, Oregon. and there was no, repeat no tracks to Seneca, they had been scrapped.

Jim Bryant

Jeff, it was July of 1984, but the line to Seneca had been scrapted by then...

Jeff, your pages contain several hours of interesting reading. Thanks for going to the effort to document this and other rail lines.

Best,
Jim Burrill
Loveland, CO

I drove the road between Crane and Riverside last spring. It
is very scenic. There is no road access that I could find, on a
map, between Riverside and Juntura. Unfortunately that area looks
like it might be the most scenic of all. There are still lots of
bridges left, some even look like they're brand new. I envy the
railfans that got to see this line in action.
Geoff

Thanks for the compliments for the High Desert Rails website. I've always been a fan of "dry side" timber roads in northern California and eastern Oregon, but not a lot has been written about them and there is even less on the internet. I started thinking seriously about High Desert Rails about two years ago, and I finally got the first pages up about a year ago. Since then I have covered all of the railroads I wanted to cover save for one, the Sumpter Valley. Other railroads covered on this site include:

City of Prineville
Big Creek & Telocaset
Condon Kinzua & Southern
Union Railroad of Oregon
Brooks-Scanlon Lumber Company
Shevlin-Hixon Lumber Company
Mount Emily Lumber Company
Union Pacific/BNSF
Oregon Pacific
Oregon California & Eastern/Weyerhaeuser Woods
Klamath Northern
Lake County/Great Western
Nevada-California-Oregon

I could not have done half of what I have accomplished without some people I have met along the way- Louis K. Thelen, Jack Bowden, Jimmy Bryant, Jerry Lamper, David Rygmyr and the other good people at Oso Press, and Keith Ardinger, just to name a few.

It has been a fun website to put together, and I am glad that people are being able to enjoy it.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV