Old Franklin School in May 2019

Exterior photo of old Franklin School (Pioneer Center) on Pioneer Hill at 240 SE Dexter St by Laura Emerson Via posted May 19, 2019, at 8:27 PM at 'Remember Pullman when.....' Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/114434761988311

WHEAT COUNTRY TRAINS and GRAIN SHIPS

=Book: Wheat Country Railroad: The Northern Pacific’s Spokane & Palouse and Competitors (WSU Press, Dec. 1, 2018) by Philip F. Beach

For more info:

https://wsupress.wsu.edu/product/wheat-country-railroad

According to WSU Press:

“Vying for economic supremacy on the Palouse, the Oregon Railway & Navigation Co., Union Pacific, and Northern Pacific Railroad laid rail, invested capital, speculated, and built a remarkable infrastructure that included the Columbia and Palouse Railroad and the competing Spokane & Palouse Railway. Their intense rivalry played a critical role in eastern Washington and northwest Idaho’s agricultural and population growth. Based on internal railroad correspondence and documents, and contemporary publications and newspapers, Wheat Country Railroad offers the most comprehensive and detailed study ever compiled of the area’s late 19th and early 20th century railroading.

“Railroad development and competition played a critical role in eastern Washington and northwest Idaho’s agricultural and population growth. Sweeping opportunity lured transportation moguls into the fertile Palouse country—one of the world’s most productive grain-growing landscapes. Recognizing the potential for profit, East Coast financial interests, as well as powerful Portland and Puget Sound players battled for regional economic supremacy in an intense rivalry. Meanwhile, settlers and farmers arriving in the 1870s and ’80s courted competition between railroad companies in order to reduce freight rates.

“Initially as partners and later as opponents, the Oregon Railway & Navigation Co., Union Pacific, and Northern Pacific Railroad laid rail, invested capital, speculated, and built a remarkable infrastructure that included the Columbia and Palouse Railroad and its rival, the Spokane & Palouse Railway. Wheat Country Railroad offers the most comprehensive and detailed study ever compiled of the area’s late 19th and early 20th century railroading—evaluating the personalities and actions of Henry Villard, Charles Frances Adams, Elijah Smith, James J. Hill, Edward H. Harriman, Charles Mellen, and other railroad barons who vied for wealth and empire. Based on internal railroad correspondence and documents, contemporary publications and newspapers, this new study presents a unique reference work on railroads in the West and nation during the Gilded Age and beyond.”

AUTHOR: Now retired, Philip F. Beach was a political science professor for35. He left the WSU political science faculty in 1964 and joined the Fesno State University faculty in 1964 until retiring in 1997. He’s a former chair of that university’s political science department. He has published multiple articles on Washington and Idaho railroad history, said WSU Press and other sources.

=Info: The “Grain Fleet” 1900

For more info: https://clackamascountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/the-grain-fleet-1900/amp

I have always considered this photograph of the 1900 “Grain Fleet” at anchor in Portland the most beautiful scene at the Portland waterfront. The following is an article from the November 4, 1900 Oregonian that echoes the romance and poetry I see in this photo. Although not about Clackamas County, a large portion of the wheat being shipped out through the “Grain Fleet” grew in our county, says a posting at the website of the Clackamas County Historical Society in Oregon.

Also from Clackamas County Historical Society website:

Leading with Grain

Few people, perhaps, when they mention it realize the magnitude of a shipload of grain. The capacity of the graceful three and four-masted vessels that yearly visit this port is something to surprise and unreflecting person. Ten freight trains of 25 cars each, or one train over a mile and a half long, would be required to carry the wheat that goes into the hold of a single ship. The manner in which the cargo is taken on depends upon the stage of the water. When the river is at its lowest point, or somewhere near it, the grain (in sacks) is sent from the warehouse down a zigzag chute, into the hold. In its descent, the sack turns over at each angle of the chute, and when it reaches the bottom is seized and securely stowed where it is to remain during the long voyage around the Horn. As the sacks are piled in place, the interstices between them are filled with loose grain, in order to prevent any slightest shifting about of the cargo. The loose grain is packed in, trampled by the feet of the laborers.

When the water is so high that there is not sufficient fall from the dock to the hold for the grain to move by gravity, elevators, operated by electricity, are employed, and the work proceeds uninterruptedly until the ship has received her full cargo. The facilities for loading are constantly being improved, and keep pace with the increase of tonnage. It is by no means unusual for a ship to begin discharging ballast Monday morning and have her cargo stowed by Saturday night of the same week. The discharging of hundreds of tons of ballast is in itself a task that involved no small amount of labor.

But to go back: The British ship Lady Wentworth recently took on 25,900 sacks of wheat during a period of nine hours, and in the same length of time, the Dumeraig, as was reported in the Oregonian of Tuesday last, received 23,525 sacks. The Conway, also English, and of 1776 tons register, which cleared from Portland October 30, was only 12 days in the Willamette River, while the Osterbeck, a German, was ready for sea exactly 15 days after crossing the bar. The last-mentioned craft loaded over 3,000 tons of wheat and was in Portland not quite 12 days.

The grain for shipment is delivered at the vessel’s rail by the exporters who supply the laborers or “dockmen” to handle it. The longshoremen then take charge of it and put it aboard.

While nature has done much for this inland harbor, making it one of the safest in the world, man has not neglected to add improvements that have contributed to make it one of the most accessible as well. Systematic and combined effort on the part of the Commission of the Port of Portland has within the past few years so deepened the channel from the city to the sea that it is now not only possible, but perfectly safe, for laden vessels drawing 22 feet of water to pass out at any stage of the tide and with the river at zero.

The Incoming Fleet 

In addition to the vessels already cleared since the opening of the season and those now loading, no less than 62 sailing craft are on the way to this port to receive cargoes of wheat. These, of course, do not include the steamships that are here, or due soon to arrive from the other side of the Pacific and which will, in many instances, load with wheat and flour.

Taking all things into consideration, Portland may well be proud of her grain fleet. There are but four ports in the United States that, in the nine months closing with October 1, exceeded this on the Willamette in the amount and value of wheat shipments. And for this last month, Portland has led both San Francisco and Puget Sound.

Commerce is not without its aesthetic features, in spite of Ruskin’s notion to the contrary. And its commercial utility in no way detracts from the romance and the poetry that are the inalienable characteristics of the grain fleet of the Willamette. Any ship that sails the high seas embodies this romance, this poetry. In every mast and spar and straining timber she is thrilled with the hidden meaning of the deep.

PHOTOS:

…Book cover – WSU Press.

…Ships - Clackamas County Historical Society