NEAR KENO, Ore.–Like ghosts from the past, timbers from an 80-year-old railroad trestle stand amid a grove of fir trees along the old Weyerhauser “100″ logging railroad near Keno. The rail line was abandoned about 50 years ago in favor of trucks, and this is the lone reminder of what it took to cross the creeks and canyons of the Greensprings. In addition to the wind in the trees, you can almost hear the sound of the steam engine laboring up the mountain.
Klamath County Museum director Todd Kepple says, “they had a big trestle down at Spencer Creek, and then the line continue on up the hill, comin’ up Hayden Mountain here.” He continues, “and there’s a trestle here on the side of this hill. There’s another trestle up by Camp Three, where they had a logging camp operation for awhile. Where that trestle crossed highway 66, today there is just a pair of tree and brush covered embankments that led to the road crossing. Kepple adds that, “of the number of trestles that Weyerhauser had in the hills here, this one is the only one that still has a remnant still standing! And it’s pretty easy to drive right by this trestle and never even see that it’s there.”
Across the ravine, rocks on the hillside form a terrace to provide a secure base for the vertical supports. There is another Weyerhauser trestle east of Klamath Falls on the line that went out to Bly and Beatty. It still stands and serves recreational users of the trail there now. Author Jack Bowden told the Newswatch in 2010 that “they built railroads everywhere. Klamath County was covered by railroads.” It may be because much of the east side terrain was relatively flat and more accessible to railroad logging.
The Algoma Lumber Company had several miles of track, mostly east of Klamath Lake. Viewer photos taken a few years ago show another old crumbling trestle on that line, seemingly held up only by the trees that have grown up through the timbers. That line was abandoned over 70 years ago. Todd Kepple observes that “what’s fascinating I think is to think about the engineers, the designers of these railroads who didn’t have GPS devices. They didn’t have lasers. They just relied on the skill that they had as engineers and surveyors to be able to lay out these railroad lines. And then build these trestles that supported locomotives and long trains of log cars loaded with heavy logs every day, making a trip from the woods into the mill.”
On the west side of the Cascades, the old Medford Corporation logging railroad also had several trestles to reach the timberlands around Butte Falls. Today none are standing, but there are remnants of the timbers and beams that carried the heavy loads of logs across canyons and creeks. The old Weyerhauser trestle probably wouldn’t be standing today if it wasn’t for the trees that have grown up since it was last used many decades ago. Kind of ironic that a trestle that was used to help haul the logs in out of the woods is being held up today by the very trees that were once cut.