Hi family, friends, and train buddies! This 113 year old railroad postcard pictures a 125' long single log load (carefully) hauled by rail from thjacke forest. Fact or Fiction?  Bill

_______________________________________________

POSTCARDS OF THE PAST

Long Timber, (Length 125 Feet) Bellingham, Washington            

_______________________________________________________

Unlike the series of promotional railroad postcards of the early 1900’s that pictured imaginary giant fruit and vegetables, this 125’ log in the Bellingham Bay and British Columbia Railroad yard appears to be an authentic load captured by the postcard photographer from Edward H, Mitchell Publishers chained to a set of disconnected trucks and pulled from the woods. When the Northern Pacific Railroad selected Tacoma over Whatcom on Bellingham Bay, local interests created the B.B.&B.C. Railroad in 1883 to run about 56 miles from Bellingham, where the company owned a town site and about 400 acres, (then known as Schome) to Burrard Inlet (now located in Vancouver) and ultimately connecting with the Canadian Pacific Railway. Additional lines were completed in Northwestern Washington after the turn of the century serving numerous logging camps, a limestone mine, cold storage plants and a range of active industries. The original B.B. & B.C. railroad underwent several ownerships through the decades and was ultimately taken over by the Burlington Northern merging with Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe creating the newly formed BNSF in 1996. Various lines have been slowly abandoned as industries closed and decommissioned portions of the original B.B.&B.C. roadbed are being converted into a “rail trail”  

1908 postcard from the collection of Bill Ralph