Traveling the West Side Rail

Today, I’m leaving from Fern Hill Wetlands, the stormwater remediation site of Forest Grove and one of the best birdwatching sites in the county. I'm riding to Hagg Lake along the West Side Railroad but today's ride also has an unintentional theme of municipal water management.

Carnation

Originally known as South Forest Grove, Carnation was renamed to commemorate the condensed milk company that built a cannery in town.

Carnation (the corporation) was drawn to the Valley thanks to both plentiful cows and rail service (the tracks still pass through Carnation). As the dairy industry transitioned to megafarms in eastern Oregon and California, the factory became uneconomical. 

Carnation is now entirely within the Forest Grove city limits, but retains a few historic landmarks of note. The SakeOne factory offers tours and tastings. It's perfect for those looking for something a little different from the dozens of vineyards in the valley.

I use “In Search of Western Oregon” as a major source of my research but the author can often be dismissive of small towns. Case in point, Dilley is called a ghost town and that’s not fair. 

More people live in Dilley today than in its heyday. A community of 2000 people was considered a sizable hub at one point. Our perception is the only thing that’s changed.

Dilley may no longer have stores or a power plant but it’s still thriving. The school is over 100 years old (go Dolphins!). Beyond the main town are mansions and sizable vineyards, including lands for Montinore estates, one of the largest wine producers of the valley.

Stimson Mill

Continuing down Old Hwy 47 (and briefly New Hwy 47). through more vineyards, solar arrays and other farmlands. I turn right at the 7 Star convenience store (which has a bike hub and port o potty) and travel a few miles up the road is Stimson Mill, the largest lumber operation in Washington County and where the railroad ends.

The mill was never a community per se. It began life as a logging camp, winter housing for the lumberjacks clearing trees in the winter. Camps like this were once common, there were dozens in Washington County alone. Most only lasted a few years until the immediate area was cleared.

Camps vanished in the mid-1940s as daily commutes became easier than provisioning temporary housing. Stimson mill evolved into a permanent lumbermill thanks to the railroad. Despite the inaccuracy, it remains on Washington County maps as a local community.

Stimson mill remains the main customer of this Southern Pacific Railroad line. If, like me, you’ve ever been caught on the wrong side of the tracks while cars loaded with lumber pass by remember: each train car is at least two semitrucks worth of material. Every train keeps dozens of trucks from clogging our roads and helps the remaining timber industry stay solvent.

Scoggins Valley/Hagg Lake

Let’s be honest: no one travels this road to visit the lumberyard. Almost everyone is on their way to Hagg Lake.

Hagg Lake is a manmade reservoir completed in the 1970s. While we tend to treat it as a major recreation site of the county, it’s far more important than that. It’s our primary way to store drinking and irrigation water. If you are hooked up to municipal water and live in Washington County, it most likely comes from here.

Washington County is blessed with ample rainfall but its highly seasonal. Our 600,000 residents need water all summer and introduced crops need irrigation to maximize production. Hagg Lake was built to save up the winter and spring rains to last each summer.

Scoggins Valley is now at the bottom of the lake. There was no proper town in the valley but many homes were displaced when the dam was built. Hagg Lake doesn’t appear as a WashCo community on modern maps but I consider it far more important than the likes of Detour.

After purification, the water is pumped to tanks on top of Fern Hill (the hill, not the wetland) and gravity carries it to all our homes. On the whole, a good journey through history along the oldest rail in the area.