Even though much has been written about the Camas Prairie Railroad, not everyone who reads this blog will be familiar with it. The Camas Prairie Railroad (CSP) was a jointly owned operating company established in 1909 by the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) and Northern Pacific Railway (NP) to provide both parent companies with access to central Idaho without duplicate trackage. The CSP owned no right of way or trackage, and it had no rolling stock of its own other that some maintenance-of-way equipment.
Lewiston, Idaho, was the last major city in the in the Inland Pacific Northwest to be linked to the national rail network when a Northern Pacific line from Spokane, Washington, finally arrived there in 1898 after having been delayed for five years by the Panic of 1893 and the NP bankruptcy. By 1900, the NP had used its affiliated Clearwater Short Line (CSL) to build a branch 63 miles up the Clearwater River to Stites, Idaho to stake a claim to the region with an eye towards a secondary mainline over Lolo Pass to Missoula, Montana. The CSL also built a 12-mile branch along Lapwai Creek toward the Nez Perce Prairie and the Camas Prairie (now typically known collectively as the Camas Prairie) that ended at a narrow point in the canyon aptly named Culdesac, Idaho. During this time, the Union Pacific Railroad and other companies also eyed the Clearwater River corridor as a way to tap the resources of central Idaho and as route through the Bitterroot Mountains. This included the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul that was planning its Pacific Extension at the time. These various interests in the region lead to a series of competing surveys and some skirmishes between survey crews that came to be known as the Clearwater Railroad War.
As the new century opened, local business interests in Lewiston clamored for an additional railroad line to tap the resources of the prairies and forests to the southeast and for a rail outlet to the west along the Snake River. Such lines would have to traverse rugged topography, and neither the NP nor the UP was eager bear the full cost of building such lines only to split the traffic if a duplicate line was built by the other company. However, both felt that they would need to take action to block the entrance of a third railroad in the region.
By 1905, an agreement had been reached between the top managements of the UP and NP that any line up the Snake River from the west to Lewiston and any line to the Camas Prairie would be a joint operation. In 1908, a UP-owned company completed a 72-mile line up the Snake River from Riparia, Washington to Lewiston, and NP’s CSL finished the line from Culdesac to Grangeville, Idaho, another 55 miles. In 1909, these lines were leased to the Camas Prairie Railroad for 999 years. Each parent railroad supplied half of the rolling stock needed and covered half of the annual operating expenses of the new company. The NP also built a connecting line between the newly completed Spokane Portland & Seattle line at Snake River Junction, Washington, to the joint line at Riparia to gain a downriver outlet for its Camas Prairie traffic.
In the mid-1920s, Weyerhaeuser timber interests needed a railroad to tap their timber holdings east of Orofino, Idaho, on the CSL. The NP and UP agreed to extend the joint line concept, and a new railroad was completed to Headquarters, Idaho in 1927. On January 1, 1928, the new line and the CSL east of Lewiston along the Clearwater River were added to the Camas Prairie lease as the CSP Fourth and First Subdivisions, respectively. At this time, the Grangeville line became the Second Subdivision, and the downriver line west of Lewiston became the Third Subdivision. This established an operating pattern on the CSP that lasted for nearly 60 years.
Along with the new line into the timber holdings, a new, large sawmill was built just east of Lewiston to process the timber harvested. Originally called Clearwater Timber, the company was consolidated with other Weyerhaeuser operations in the region in 1931 to form Potlatch Forests, Incorporated, commonly known as PFI. In the early 1950s, the Lewiston mill was supplemented by the addition of a plywood mill and a pulp and paper mill.
A major change to CSP operations came in 1981 when NP’s successor, Burlington Northern, stopped through service on their Palouse and Lewiston (P&L) Branch from Spokane in favor of routing all the CSP traffic downriver with the southernmost portion of the P&L between Moscow, Idaho, and the CSP abandoned in 1986. With traffic dwindling and the Union Pacific in need of cash, the Camas Prairie lines were sold in 1998 to North American RailNet, which operated the lines as Camas Prairie RailNet. RailNet abandoned the Second Subdivision in 2000 and then sold the rest of the operation to a Watco-affiliated short line, Great Northwest Railroad (GNR), in 2004. GNR abandoned the Fourth Sub later that year and turned over the operation of the remaining lines east of Lewiston to BG&CM Railroad in 2005. GNR continues to serve Lewiston and points west. Most of the Second Sub trackage has been removed, and the remaining Second Sub track along with the First Sub east of Arrow, Idaho, is used for freight car storage at the current time.
If you’re interested in the history of the Camas Prairie Railroad, I highly recommend Garry and Roz Miller’s 320-page book, The Camas Prairie, Idaho’s Panhandle Railroad, published by the Union Pacific Historical Society. It’s currently available on the UPHS website.
No comments:
Post a Comment