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Virtual Tour Page Two |
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Looking eastward on Electric Avenue near
Gose Avenue. Hiroshi Okada photo, 1972.
At Blalock, WWV crossed the UP line to Wallula at a gate-protected
crossing. The UP siding location is Garrett. Spur to Garrett packing shed
left WWV main at the base of the curve, passing behing the white pumphouse
building on the right. Hiroshi Okada photo, 1972
Looking west from previous location, Garrett fruit shed with UP main and
spur. WWV spur was on other side of shed. Hiroshi Okada photo, 1972
Feb. 2002 view of Garrett shed, looking west from the WWV side of
structure.
On the south side of College Place, Yellowhawk branch departed southwest,
climbing out of town on a fill.
Grain elevators at Baker-Langdon, 2002. Concrete silo in rear is recent
addition. Original elevator building was between the two steel tanks,
since torn down.
View northward on WWV train in 1972 as it leaves Mojonnier station,
following Garrson Creek. Hiroshi Okada photo.
WWV roadbed on fill leaving Mojonnier station. That's the old Hothouse
Vegetable Company boiler house and packing shed with the smokestack. Large
greenhouses had recently been demolished. Marc Entze photo, 2001.
View from southbound WWV train, 1972, as it approaches Walla Walla River
bridge. Hiroshi Okada photo.
Northward view as WWV heads away from Beet road at Zigman through
pastureland. Hiroshi Okada photo, 1972.
Surviving packing shed at Stateline, 2001, photo by Marc Entze. WWV spurs
were on both sides of this building.
Old packing shed on west side of WWV right of way, Ferndale, 2002.
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Through the orchards:
Walla Walla to
Milton-Freewater
Two miles from Valley Wye,
the WWV is firmly in the country, rolling past sturdy frame houses with
big front yards and impressive trees. A steady shipper on the WWV was
Stone Equipment Company, whose 10-car capacity unloading spur connected
just west of Woodland Avenue. WWV then headed due west along
appropriately-named Electric Avenue, near the location of Orchard Siding. Recent earthmoving in this area has
eradicated some of the old WWV right of way, and a pronounced cut through
a small hill near Gose Ave. has been filled in. The railroad makes a
sweeping curve to the south and crosses the Union Pacific line to
Wallula at the old station of Blalock (MP 3.28). Gates once protected the
UP crossing, and WWV served a vinegar plant on the east side of Evans
Road, and the old Garrett fruit packing shed on the west side of the road,
both shippers served by the Union Pacific as well.
The Garrett fruit shed
still stands, and is now a private residence. Its 140’ long concrete
construction was lengthened in the 1940s with 40’ wood frame additions on
both ends. The WWV served the structure with a spur on its south side.
The railroad now makes a jog to the southeast to enter the town of
College Place. On the north end of town, the WWV skirts a single large
industrial park metal building built in the 1960s, formerly a
small lumber finishing company. A few blocks to the south, the WWV splits
the campus of Walla Walla College, paralleling the east side of SW Davis
Avenue past playing fields. A small passing siding once fit between 4th
and 6th street.
The Yellowhawk
Branch
South of 6th street, the WWV curves southwestward toward
Milton-Freewater. This was the junction with the Yellowhawk branch, which
diverges southeasterly on a wide curve as it climbs a 2 percent grade
across a fill and through a cut. Alignment to avoid steep grades was
not a priority when the Yellowhawk branch was built in 1924 into large
orchardlands. The line
climbs steeply away from the mainline, crosses College Avenue, then
descends steeply on a hillside along Mojonnier Road before angling across
a field and crossing Highway 125 (Milton-Freewater highway). The
light-railed branch hugs the shoulder of Taumarson Road, makes a little
S-curve, climbs a little rise, and descends to cross Plaza Way
and the Union Pacific (now Blue Mountain & Palouse) Pendleton branch. The
branch passes an oil distributor along Yellowhawk Road, makes another
short but sudden drop to cross Yellowhawk Creek amid a small grove of
trees, then turns south for the last mile to the grain elevator complex of
Baker-Langdon. Today, a trio of elevators stand, two steel
silos and a large new concrete structure, but a concrete foundation reveals a
wood-framed elevator once stood between the two concrete silos trackside.
The WWV here consisted of an elevator siding with a crossover in the
middle, and a long (approximately ˝ mile) tail track. In addition to the
wheat loaded here, sugar beets moved during a fall campaign into the early
1970s. This line was abandoned weeks before the rest of the railroad.
Into The Orchards
For the
rest of the run into Milton-Freewater, the Walla Walla Valley is truly a
country interurban railroad. Perhaps most scenic are the 2 ˝ miles
between College Place and the Walla Walla River crossing (MP 6.18). The
railroad traverses small orchards as it follows the drainage of Garrison
Creek, descending at times gradient between 1.4 and 2.2 percent, the
steepest section of the railroad. The WWV bisects a small valley and
emerges on the valley floor near the Walla Walla River at the station of
Mojonnier (formerly Whitman). A short spur here once served the Walla
Walla Hothouse Vegetable Company, which loaded refrigerator cars at a
small loading shed and boiler house adjacent to a pair of large (196’ X
225’) greenhouses. The green houses were torn down in the past few years,
but the loading shed’s tall smokestack is a landmark in the area.
Scarcely a quarter mile to
the south, the WWV crosses the Walla Walla River, in interurban
days the meeting point of trains from Walla Walla and Milton-Freewater.
The railroad crossed the river on an 8-pier, 215-foot bridge., and this crossing is
the low point on the railroad. In the six miles northward to Walla Walla,
the WWV climbs 253 feet, an average gradient of .8 percent.
It’s not quite a mile more
to Zigman (MP 7.12), the railroad running parallel to and then
crossing Beet Road, an appropriate name, as the adjacent 2286’ foot
siding (with crossover) at Zigman was one of the WWV’s busiest points in
terms of cars loaded. A huge pile of sugar beets would form alongside the
railroad in the fall, and the Valley would move between 10 and 40 cars of
sugar beets a day from Zigman, bound for Utah & Idaho Sugar factories in
Toppenish and Scalley, Washington. The siding was originally constructed
for $7,200 in 1926 to allow the storage of refrigerator cars during the
late summer fruit rush. By the late 1940s, rapid development of the sugar
beet crop found the siding choked with black open-top gondolas and hoppers
during the late fall and early winter months as well.
At Stateline, MP
7.99, the railroad makes a ninety degree turn to the left, running
east-west along the Oregon-Washington line. Here was located a siding, a
fruit dryer, and at least two prune packing sheds. One survives
today. It was served by one parallel spur on its east side and
two on its west side. The Tomlinson Dairy was likely the last shipper to
receive traffic at Stateline station, the consignee for many cars of
plastic dairy bottles during the late 1960s and early 1970s. East of
here, the tracks cross Stateline Road at Twilight station (MP 8.36), just
out of sight of “The Oasis,” a restaurant and lounge sporting a
cool 1940s look. From here on into Milton-Freewater, the tracks will
remain largely amid the orchards, intersected at right angles by country
roads.
One of these roads crosses
at the station of Ferndale (MP 9.95), where another apple packing
shed was located. The tree friuit business has gone through several
lifecycles, from a boom in the 1920s and 30s to hard times in the 1940s to
a brief revival before a disastrous hard freeze in the fall of 1955 wiped
out the tree fruit business for many years. Apples and cherries made a
strong comeback in the mid-1960s, but today many large orchards are
succumbing to pressure from developers, who want the land for houses, or
wineries, who need grapes. Almost hidden among the trees several hundred
feet of Ferndale Road is Ferndale’s fruit packing shed, used today
for storage by a local landowner.
At the crossing of
Sunnyside Road was the location of Sunnyside station, MP 11.2, and
from 1958-1963 the site of a short-lived planing mill operated by
Nebraska Bridge Supply and Lumber Co. During its operating life, over
1000 cars were shipped from here. The mill shut down due to competitive
pressures from larger local mills such as Georgia Pacific, Harris Pine
Mills and Walla Walla Lumber for a reliable log supply. Adjacent to the
planing mill was a sawmill owned by Inland Fir Company.
A half-mile to the south,
at the Cobb Road crossing was the wide spot of Cobb, MP 11.7. Today
a maintenance lot for a trucking firm, in WWV days a fertilizer depot
operated out of here (perhaps doing business as Nachurs Plant Food?). A
steady traffic of PSPX (Phillips reporting marks) tank cars carrying
liquid ammonia fertilizer from a chemical plant at Finley, Washington (on
the SP&S just south of Pasco) existed until late in the railroad’s life.
Several storage tanks and a loading rack were located here, bearing the
Phillips 66 herald. The spur opened on the south end.
South from Cobb, the WWV
runs parallel to and on the east side of County 541 road, which becomes North
Main Street at the city limits to Milton-Freewater.
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