Lind-Ralston, Washington; 15 miles of fading history

[funnelfan]

This morning while at Hastings in Spokane, I found a photography book called "Palouse Country" (funny, I just made a thread with that name). But after a quick flip through, I was disappointed. It was a series of black and white photos, with the first two-thirds of the book being building portraits and the remaining third a series of close up nature photos. It missed the heart and soul of the country, namely the farmers and their equipment and facilities. Who can one make a photo book of "Palouse Country without a single image of a combine? or the railroads that served the grain elevators?, or the barges on the Snake River? But yet the book omitted these elements among many others that make up the soul of the Palouse Hills.

Heading south with that afternoon with that bitter disappointment still fresh in mind, filled me with inspiration to capture some elements that are oft overlooked while railfanning. Besides, the day was heavily overcast, and I was just not up for railfanning (besides having several opportunities to do just that). I elected to go photograph a section of the former Milwaukee Mainline that was still complete with a pole line. But along the way I found much more to photograph than an empty right-of-way.

Much like Milwaukee’s Pacific extension, the traditional pole line is quickly disappearing from western railroading. Replaced by modern Electrocode technology, a railroad icon as old as the rails themselves is becoming increasingly scarce. Such is the irony that the pole line would outlive the rails that once tread the now empty grade of the Milwaukee mainline.

[funnelfan]

I arrived none too soon, a wheat field fire consumed a large area along the old ROW. The fire destroyed a few sections of the old pole line, and much more of the old right-of-way fence. But the firefighters successfully used the old grade as a fire break and minimized the damage. But even as the fire utterly burned the old fence posts and braces to the point of carbonized splinters, a few steal artifacts emerged from the vaporized sagebrush.

[funnelfan]

It took a series of congressional actions to get rural America wired for phone and electrical service. But since the cost of poles, insulators, and wire is so hard to justify for such a sparsely settled land, the upgrading of those pioneering utilities is often long in coming. One does not often have to look far or long in this rugged land to find examples of the original equipment still persisting long past it’s expected life.

[funnelfan]

With the fading of the granger railroading, the rural highway has become the lifeline of the Palouse Hills, and indeed all of rural America. These one time wagon roads that once followed railroad branchlines and mainlines from one small town to the next, have been continually maintained and upgraded much to the benefit of the farmers. Evidence of the upgrading comes in the example of abandoned highway bridge across a dry creek bed just below the abandoned grade of the Milwaukee. The highway was abandoned for a better route, the Milwaukee was just abandoned. But quirks remain, such as the road following the grade of the old Milwaukee having to jog around a one-time Milwaukee shipper in the form of a grain tower.

[funnelfan]

The old chain has been broken. At one time the wheat went from the combine to the farmers elevator, to the railroad elevator, and finally to the port elevator or a customer. Today the wheat is trucked directly from the combine to the barge elevators on the Snake River (aside from what little is shipped by rail).

[funnelfan]

The relics of the past tools of farming still litter the Palouse Hills. And I find it amazing that one could publish a book that excluded these items.

[No-Defects]

I wasn't aware that the Lind-Ralstrom area is/was part of the Palouse - I've always thought of that area being part of the channeled scab lands - but what do I know?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palouse

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846 Is this the book that you are referring too?

Never-the-less - some interesting photos from a desolate part of Washington State.

[funnelfan]

Originally Posted by No-Defects

I wasn't aware that the Lind-Ralstrom area is/was part of the Palouse - I've always thought of that area being part of the channeled scab lands - but what do I know?

Well yes and no, I'm guess how you you refer to it is a matter of personal opinion. Prior to the Missoula Floods some 10,000 years ago, and "Palouse Hills" would have stretched from Moses Lake into Idaho. And even though the floods carried away many of these hills in the western half of the territory, many hills also remained. I considered everything east of the I-90/395 corridor as being the Palouse region.

[roee]

funnelfan, I don't normally like black & white photos, but these are really good. It really gives the feel that these are old photos. Well, all exepct post 3, shot 4. The rest look like you could have taken them in the 50's or eariler.

[douglasm]

I very much agree with Funnelfan's view. Continue West on the highway from Lind towards Warden (where I seem to lose the roadbed--is it the Columbia Basin Railroad to Othello?) then west from Othello towards Beverly on the Crab Creek Road for the same feeling. The rail is still in from Othello to Royal City (and the Topenish, Simcoe and Western has a locomotive "stranded" at the SunFresh plant there) but the eyeless signels are a standing testiment to what once was. The Crab Creek road is one of our favorite rides.