Nostalgia & History > Pacific Lumber on Scotia Bluffs

Heres a shot I took back in 1962 of the NWP trackage on Scotia Bluffs. Pacific Lumber was also using the tracks. Heres a work train heading out to somewhere. I was wondering were did Pacific Lumber go to and what does this location look like today?

Photobobs website:
http://www.snowcrest.net/photobob/index1.html

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A few miles north of Scotia Bluff, Palco trains left the NWP mainline at Alton, and ran up the Carlotta Branch to Carlotta. Beyond Carlotta, Palco had their own track running a few miles further to "Yager Creek Camp". At least, that was the case in 1968-1969.

Fantastic shot, Bob...

To answer your question, Pacific Lumber ran on the NWP main from Scotia north to Alton, then up the Carlotta branch from Alton to Carlotta. PALCO trains reached their own rails at Carlotta, and their private railroad extended up into the Yager Creek north from Carlotta. By the end of PALCO rail logging operations around 1979 only a few miles of track were left in place, with an extensive system of truck roads (mostly built on old railroad grades) bringing logs down to an established reload.

If I am not mistaken this portion of the NWP mainline was initially built and owned by PALCO in an attempt by that company to build a railroad to reach Humboldt Bay. A stubborn landowner who made negotiating for a right-of-way difficult caused PALCO to build this line along the east bank of the river, and all operations that have run that railroad since have paid dearly for his obstinance. One of the bigger railroads that moved into the picture bought this portion of the mainline from PALCO, but the lumber company maintained the right to operate trains (with crews provided by NWP) over the Scotia-Carlotta trackage.

As for how it looks today...I personally have not seen it in around four years now, but back then it was becoming badly overgrown with grass and weeds (species from the Poaceae family, NOT the Humboldt version of "grass"...) and there were several landslides and slipouts along this stretch.

JDLX
Elko, NV
http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails



Heres a shot I took back in 1962 of the NWP trackage on Scotia Bluffs. Pacific Lumber was also using the tracks. Heres a work train heading out to somewhere. I was wondering were did Pacific Lumber go to and what does this location look like today?

photobob Wrote:
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> Heres a shot I took back in 1962 of the NWP
> trackage on Scotia Bluffs. Pacific Lumber was also
> using the tracks. Heres a work train heading out
> to somewhere. I was wondering were did Pacific
> Lumber go to and what does this location look like
> today?
>
> Photobobs website:
> http://www.snowcrest.net/photobob/index1.html

That location was known as Nanning Creek. At one time, there was a logging line that took off out of there & went up the gulch.
The comments about TPL using the NWP were quite right...this went on for several decades. TPL usually used one of their bigger rod engines back in steam days when operating over the NWP: 2-8-2 #35 was a favorite. There was also another TPL operation that took off of the NWP, but it was a bit south of Scotia, near Shively...same type of operation as the logger had trackage rights over the NWP to get to the mill.
As an aside, if anyone ever takes the time to hike out here, look carefully when you get to the Bluffs & you should spot fossils imbedded in the sandstone. Gary Vielbaum & I found some back in 1987 or thereabouts when chasing a EUKA passenger train.
Another fine pic, Bob!

PALCO closed its Scotia Mill in the late ninties. I believe or at least a few years ago looking at their web site, they still operated the Carlotta mill. BTW, only a couple of the mills that fed the NWP still operate, something the believers in the purposed future of the NWP can't understand.

Scotia mill was still running in 2001 but closed around 2002. The company continues to run two other mills, Carlotta and Fortuna.

At the time that the north end closed steady shippers included the Louisiana Pacific particleboard plant at Korblex (6-10 cars a day), Blue Lake Lumber Company reload at Korblex (1-3 loads a day), Simpson reload on the Arcata bottoms (3-5 cars a day), Sierra Pacific Industries at Fairhaven (2-3 cars a day), Arcata Redwood (near Braecut, maybe a car a week), Schmidbaeuer Lumber in Eureka (1-3 cars a day), the PALCO mills in Carlotta, Fortuna and Scotia, Eel River Sawmills at Stone, and maybe one or two others. The L-P sawmill out at Samoa was an occassional shipper. Today most of these sawmills are gone...Simpson, Fortuna, Scotia and maybe one or two others are all that are left.

JDLX
Elko, NV

A far cry from an industry that generated a 100 cars a day for the NWP, six days a week.

Actually it was closer to 175 cars a day in 1968, when I lived in Arcata while attending Humboldt State. I used to go down to the Eureka "south yard" off of Del Norte Street and watch six SD-9's depart about 6 p.m. with 150 to 185 cars, and two cabooses on every train to handle the six or seven man crews heading for Willits. It was an unbelievable sight and sound to hear the roar of those engines as they accelerated through Bucksport. The ground would actually shake!

In the last year or two of operations on the line north of Willits the roadbed was so unstable that it could only support the passage of about 15 loads a day...any more than that and they had to spend a week or two dumping rock all over the place to repair slipouts. That put the NWP in the position of actually turning a lot of traffic away right before the end...

JDLX
Elko, NV

Palco 105 along Scotia Bluff with loads in 1968.

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Granted the right of way was bad to not to be able to support many loads, but it came down to year round service and price. Because they couldn't be counted on in the service department for whatever the reason, the trucks stepped in to carry the load(s). Price of lumber was low, it went rail. High prices went truck. It all started with the Island Mountain tunnel fire in 1978. That fire set the NWP's fate in stone. But historically, the decline started in the mid seventies.

Take a look at the logs on that train. Those trees didn't grow in 50 or 100 years. Once they are logged, they are gone, and that's what has happened. (Sure, there are some large trees left in parks.) This type of extractive logging is a one-time event and when it's done, the infrastructure (i.e., the PALCO Scotia mill, the NWP) no longer is needed. That's hard for us to face, because there is something about the NWP that is very enticing, but I am afraid it is reality.

Have to take exception with at least part of what you said...except for the extensive state parks in the region most of the "old growth" Redwood is gone, but redwoods by their nature are very fast growing trees. The sawmills that have survived on the north coast (Simpson, Sierra Pacific, etc) have all been re-tooled to handle the smaller second- and third- growth timber that is being harvested today. While the timber industry on the north coast is only a shadow of its former self, there still is a lot of logging and lumbering going on.

The Scotia mill was the really the last of the "old growth" mills, and once the big trees were gone it was cheaper to shut that mill down than to re-tool it, especially considering that the company already had two sawmills in the vicinity capable of handling the smaller trees.

For what it is worth, some of the sawmills on the coast do still ship by rail. PALCO has a reload center in Redding, and they ship a good number of centerbeams loaded with redwood trucked over from their remaining mills. I think Simpson has a reload somewhere as well.

Most of the remaining old growth on the coast is in state parks...Redwood National Park is almost exclusively second growth forests. For what it is worth, the Bureau of Land Management might have more old growth forest on their lands than the National Park Service does. Anyone have any specific acreage figures???

JDLX
Elko, NV

One thing about Palco, they kept their locomotives nice and clean. Alton Junction, 1968.

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Hi all - my first comment here on this board. This post caught my attention as I live in Fortuna and grew up watching the PALCO railroad operations in and around Alton. Both the Carlotta and Fortuna PALCO mills closed in 2004 and 2005 respectively. Additionally, reductions in workforce at the Scotia location have left it with what could be considered a skeleton crew since late in the summer of 2007. What will become of PALCO and its timber holdings are almost completed after a 15 month long bankruptcy case in a Texas court. The Judge's final decision on the matter is expected sometime in the next few weeks. Nitehostler's comment about the fossils on the Scotia Bluffs is right on the mark! We have many fossil embedded rocks gathered from river bar below the bluffs adorning our garden area.