Skagit River Journal of History & Folklore Subscribers Edition Stories & Photos The most in-depth, comprehensive site about the Skagit. Covers from British Columbia to Puget sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan. An evolving history dedicated to the principle of committing random acts of historical kindness

Noel V. Bourasaw, editor 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284 Home of the Tarheel Stomp Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug

This George Vogel photo of the Sedro-Woolley depot on the south side of Ferry street was probably taken circa 1920. When Interurban service ended, the building housed Dr. Jones's original veterinary office and a fuel and transfer service that was later operated by the late Gene Mohler and mayor Puss Stendal.

      In 1912, Sedro-Woolley was firmly connected to the western part of the county by the electri-fied Interurban trolley that ran on a track right-of-way that was nearly identical to what is now Highway 20 west from Burlington. The stretch inside Burlington city limits is today partially covered by a narrow park-like lawn. The line entered Sedro-Woolley on Woodworth street and continued east to the spot where an electric substation is now lo-cated just south of the North Cascade Ford parking lot on the south side of Ferry street. The depot was located on that parking lot, just east of the St. Charles Hotel, and that depot is now at the crossroads of Hwy 20 and the Cook road.
      Until 1912, settlers from Sterling through upriver were dependent on the west-to-east Seattle & Northern Railroad, canoes, steamboats or a stagecoach bumping along rough roads that made a trip to Mount Vernon an all-day affair. You can see more stories about the formation of the Interurban in the series of links at the end of this article. Briefly, we know from an article in the Weekly Blade of Whatcom (now part of Bellingham) on Oct. 14, 1903, that the first steps were taken towards an Interurban route were taken that month at an organiza-tional meeting of the Whatcom-Skagit Interurban Co. which amassed $3 million in capital stock. The actual line was nearly a decade away and would await the leadership of the Stone & Webster Co., which began as a partnership in Boston in 1889 as one of the country's first electrical engineering consulting firms. In 1900 the company merged and managed eight small street railways in Seattle under the name of the Seattle Electric Co. They soon added street railway systems in Tacoma and Everett and in 1902 they bought the Fairhaven and New Whatcom railway, just before the city of Bellingham consolidated in 1903.
      The Bellingham and Skagit Interurban Railway [B&SI] was incorporated on May 18, 1910, and the company planned tracks to Mount Vernon, Sedro-Woolley and Anacortes and other points. So far, we have not found a connection with the 1903 group and B&SI. You can read about the construction of the route along Chuckanut drive in our pictorial feature listed below in the list of links to background stories. Warren Wing re-ports in his comprehensive book, To Seattle by Trolley, that three S&W investors from Portland, Maine, were the original B&SI incorporators. We have not yet connected this group with the original 1903 com-pany.
      In 1912 the Interurban bridge was built over the Skagit river between the Pacific Highway (later Hwy 99) automobile bridge and the GN railway bridge just in time to beat the September construction deadline. That steel automobile bridge was dismantled in the spring of 2005 and replaced by a concrete structure. Just to the east of the new bridge you can see pilings on the north and south shore that are the only remnants of the Interurban bridge. The first electric-powered Interurban trains connected Bellingham with Mount Vernon and Sedro-Woolley on Aug. 31, 1912, with grand hoopla. S&W went on to play a key role in the construction of dams on the upper Skagit river. In another linked article, you can read about the Dollar Way, the first, short paved highway along the north of the Interurban that S&W built as part of their deal to obtain right-of-way between Burlington and Se-dro-Woolley. The article below is one of a series in Issue 28 about the Interurban. This 1913 Mount Vernon Ar-gus article recounts the first six months of the line.

This Andy Loft photo of the Mount Vernon turnaround from the book, Skagit Settlers, is most interesting. The caption reads: "At the end of the interurban line in Mount Vernon the cars turned around on a curving trestle over the river where the Moose Hall now stands. This was outside the dike and when the river was very high, as in this picture, the muddy waters swirling underneath made the turn-around somewhat frightening." We hope that a reader will have other photos of the waterfront and the turnaround spot of this time that will show this are be-fore the present revetment was built.

      The success of the street railways led to the extension of electric lines into rural areas and ul-timately to the connection of urban areas by larger and faster electric cars called interurbans. Between 1900 and 1914, Whatcom and Skagit counties were virtually hotbeds of interest in the construction of interurban lines. Farmers of the Nooksack Valley and Skagit Valley were especially interested in building interburans in order to get their farm produce to the nearest steam railroad and then to market. The construction of the Bellingham and Skagit Railway in 1911-12 represented an attempt by S&W to funnel the agricultural bounty of the Skagit Valley through Bellingham, the nearest seaport and major regional railroad center. Plans to build north from Bellingham to tap the rich Nooksack valley were shelved at the outbreak of World War I.
      S&W [initially] spared no expense in their construction of the Bellingham and Skagit, which was renamed Pacific Northwest Traction Company in early 1912. However, their failure to connect the Bellingham-Mount Vernon segment with the Seattle-Everett portion of the new line because of a war-caused lack of capital doomed the line from the beginning. Like most other Northwest industries, the interurban did well during the latter part of the war, but over the long run, it was financially unsuccessful. The Puget Sound Power and Light Com-pany [now PSE], which administered S&W's Washington properties, continued to operate the line at a loss until 1930 when rail operations were ended. . . .
      The gradual transition of Pacific Northwest Traction from trains to buses did hit one snag, however. Following the February, 1927, addition of a local Bellingham to Burlington bus (to the through Bellingham to Seattle service) there was a minor uprising among some Skagit County residents. Most feared that, should interur-ban operations cease completely, their taxes would be raised to improve highways for buses. At a public meeting offi-cials of Pacific Northwest Traction alleviated these fears and pointed out that bus service would ultimately be to eve-ryone's advantage.
      Following the February introduction of through and local bus service, the operation of trains accounted for sixty per cent of the Northern Division's passenger revenue. By mid-summer, earnings on the trains had plunged to the point that vacant seats overwhelmingly outnumbered passengers [a graph in the book illustrates the figures]. In July, car No. 77 was transferred to the Southern Division and the train schedule was further re-duced.
      Freight income remained low but stable during 1927. Reduced shipment of wood slabs and hog fuel from Bellingham were responsible, coupled with the demise of the Puget Sound and Cascade Railway at Clear Lake [after the Clear Lake mill went into receivership] and subsequent loss of the gasoline and oil contract with that company. One bright spot was the use of Pacific Northwest Traction flat cars to carry trucks and the company's buses over part of the Pacific highway. For several months in the spring, the replacement of the highway bridge at Inspiration Point at Bellingham's southern city limit necessitated loading trucks and buses on flat cars and ferrying them between Grandview and South Bellingham. Like the parlor observation buses, this innovation attracted nation-wide attention and heralded modern "piggy-back" truck/train service.
      Following Pacific northwest Traction's new emphasis on bus service and the subsequent de-cline of railway passenger revenue, the interurban right of way began to deteriorate again. On July 3, 1928, car #78 derailed on the curve north of Inspiration Point, injuring several people but causing only minor damage to the car. In referring to the necessity of making badly needed improvement on the railway, the monthly report said "It [had been] proposed to carry this along during the balance of the year but due to the reaction of public sentiment on account of the derailment it was deemed advisable to rush this work at the present time."
      The public's confidence in Pacific Northwest Traction's railway operations was shaken even more on September 1, when car No. 75 derailed on the Samish Bay trestle at Rocky Point and plunged nose-first into the mud. Extensive repairs were required to both the interurban car as well as the trestle. Both of these accidents were given front-page treatment in local newspapers, causing further public skepticism about the safety of the interur-ban.
      A third event related to the poor condition of the Pacific Northwest Traction tracks proved to be the interurban's downfall. On October 10, 1928, the Skagit River bridge was condemned as unsafe and the interur-ban ceased all passenger operations. The local bus service between Bellingham and Burlington was simply extended to Mount Vernon, while the through buses operated as before.

• List of all stories in this issue about the Stone & Webster Interurban, with links and suggestions for further reading.
  
• We transcribe an article from a 1913 issue of the Mount Vernon Argus that detailed the route of the Interur-ban. And more Journal research about the birth and demise of the line.
  
• Help us identify mystery photos and caption them, and sub-mit scans of your own photos for Paul Dorpat's new Washington book and our updated Mystery Photos sec-tion. Chapter One features Chuckanut drive, the Interurban and Great Northern.
  
• A 1982 article about Andy Loft, "Mr. Interurban," who worked for the company for four decades and spent his retirement decades teach-ing groups, schools and businesses about the importance of the line.
  
• A schedule for interurban depots and stops and the mileage in between them. Story of the first day of operation in 1912, schedules for the trains and locations of the depots.
  
• Transcripts of newspaper stories from 1906-11 about the planning and construction of the Interurban.
  
• Dollar Way in Sedro-Woolley, the first paved highway in the county, which Stone & Webster built as a demonstration project to earn the right of way for the Interurban.
  

• Warren Wing. To Seattle by Trolley. Edmonds, Washington: Pacific Fast Mail, 1988. Wing is one of our favorite authors. His research and citation is impeccable, his selection of photos and presentation of them enhance the text and he has both a sense of place and time. His research and reference to little known people who made their mark is illustrated in this example: "We are all familiar with the inventions of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. Yet Frank Sprague, who was their equal, is virtually un-known. Sprague was both an engaging person and an authentic genius. Besides perfecting the electric streetcar his other inventions included the system of multiple unit control that allowed elevated and subway trains to be controlled from a single cab, and the high speed elevator. The reason his name is not as well known today is that the sold his patents to Westinghouse, Otis Elevator and others, he did not insist that his name be associated with the final prod-uct. The building of modern skyscrapers, subways and light rail systems would have been impossible without his in-ventions."
  
• Daniel E. Turbeville III. The Electric Railway Era in Northwest Washington, 1890-1930. Bellingham: Center for Pacific Northwest Studies (WWU) Occasional Paper No. 12, 1979. Turbeville is an Oregon native who received an M.A. in geography from Western Washington Univer-sity in 1976. He served as map curator at Western and worked with James Scott of the CPNW to produce the Illustrated Inventory of Historic Bellingham Buildings, 1852-1915. His book on the Interurban is a very im-portant resource that we consult several times a month.
  
• William D. Middleton. The Interurban Era. Born in Davenport Iowa, the grandson of the first chief surgeon of the Rock Island Lines, Mr. Middleton is a 1950 engineer-ing graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and did graduate work in engineering and journalism at the University of Wisconsin and then was an engineering officer in the U.S. Navy. He retired in 1993 and lives in Charlottesville Vir-ginia. He has written several books on this topic: The Time of the Trolley (1967), When the Steam Rail-roads Electrified (1974), From Bullets to BART and The Last Interurbans.
  

You can read the history websites about our prime sponsors: Allelujah Business Systems/Copies/Mailbox, 133-B State St., Sedro-Woolley, 360 855-1157 Preserve your family keep-sakes . . . allcopiersystems web page Schooner Tavern/Cocktails at 621 Metcalf street in downtown Sedro-Woolley, across from Hammer Square: www.schoonerwoolley.com web page . . . History of bar and build-ing Oliver Hammer Clothes Shop at 817 Metcalf street in downtown Sedro-Woolley, 82 years. Joy's Sedro-Woolley Bakery-Cafe at 823 Metcalf street in downtown Sedro-Woolley, 82 years. Heirloom Gardens Natural Foods at 805B Metcalf street, the original home of Oliver Hammer. Check out Sedro-Woolley First for links to all stories and reasons to shop here first or make this your destination on your visit or vacation. Would you like to buy a country church, pews, belfry, pastor's quarters and all? Email us for details. DelNagro Masonry Brick, block, stone — See our work at the new Hammer Heritage Square See our website www.4bricklayers.com

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