Ilwaco Railway and Navigation Company
The Ilwaco Railway and Navigation Company operated a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge railroad that ran for over forty years from the bar of the Columbia River up the Long Beach Peninsula to Nahcotta, Washington, on Willapa Bay.
[2] In addition to Loomis, incorporators of the Ilwaco Wharf Company included Robert Carruthers, George Johnson, Abraham Wing, and Captain J.H.D.
[5] For a number of years the company struggled to make a profit, relying on government mail and troop transport contracts, which did not pay much.
Eventually L.A. Loomis and some of his fellow entrepreneurs settled on the idea of building a railroad to replace the stage coach line that they had used to make the connection between Ilwaco and points on the Long Beach Peninsula.
For example, even though there were several derailments caused by rotting cross-ties, Loomis refused to pay for any replacements unless he could punch a hole in the tie with his walking stick.
Passengers are required to furnish themselves with life preservers, and to take their own risks, and also a pair of stilts in case of low water on the spit.
Notice--A spotter is employed on every train, to prevent beach visitors from being robbed by the Ilwaco Councilmen and attorney, while en route through the city.
For example, a schedule for April, 1905, shows times of departure from Astoria for the steamer Nahcotta as varying from as early as 5:00 a.m. to as late as 8:30 a.m.[10] Mills imagined the scene as follows: Just in time for the high tide of Ilwaco, a pompous little train rattled in from Nahcotta and waited at the wharf; then from across the bay would come the steamer, a neat side-wheeler such as the Ocean Wave, and tie up at the dock.
Passengers rushed ashore to get good seats in the narrow coaches, while freight and baggage from the boat was tumbled on the dock.
In 1898, the railroad commissioned the twin-propeller steamer Nahcotta, built in Portland, Oregon in 1898 and after resolving some engine troubles, placed her on the Astoria-Ilwaco run.
In 1890, citizens of Oysterville attempted to organize an extension of the railroad north from Nahcotta to improve business conditions there, but were not able to raise the funds to do so.
The company acquired the steam tug Flora Bell to round up log tows on Willapa Bay and bring them to Nahcotta to be loaded onto trains bound for Ilwaco.
The first leg of this work was to be a railroad built along the north shore of the Columbia river from Ilwaco to Knappton, a small settlement 17 miles (27 km) to the east.
The work was contracted out by the Columbia Valley Railroad, but it was supervised by the chief engineer of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company.
[2] Entire trains would run out on the Megler dock to large depot to meet steamboats arriving from Portland or Astoria.
[33] In 1903, T.J. Potter made daily trips, departing from the Ash Street dock in Portland at 8:00 a.m. (1:00 p.m. on Saturdays, no run on Sundays).
At this time, the Willapa Transportation Company was running both of their steamboats, the Reliable and the Shamrock, on the run from South Bend to the Long Beach Peninsula, so that it was now possible to travel from South Bend by steamboat to Nahcotta, board the train and ride down to Megler, transfer to the T. J. Potter, and travel on the T. J. Potter upriver to Portland.
However, by 1910, the Northern Pacific abandoned its plans to build out to the mouth of the Columbia on the north bank, and as a result the Ilwaco railroad never had any outside rail connection.
Starting in the summer season of 1910 through 1913 (there was a slight dip in 1912 due to persistent bad weather at the beach), these efforts produced the most business the company had ever seen.
The weather was good, a competitor resort had been destroyed by fire, and jetty projects at the mouth of the Columbia River required hauling passengers and freight.
The T. J. Potter was condemned at the start of the 1916 season and not replaced, which cut off direct water access to the Long Beach Peninsula from Portland (the source of most of the tourist business) to the railroad's dock at Megler.
This left only the previously thought inferior route of taking a train from Portland to Astoria and then a steamboat (usually the Nahcotta) to the Megler dock.
Pacific County, Washington helped out the Elving Company, giving them a $400 a year subsidy, and probably more importantly, building a road on pilings around the rocky promontory at Fort Columbia that the railroad had been forced to blast a tunnel through.
[42] In 1925, motor truck operators in Astoria started using the ferries to transfer directly over to the Long Beach Peninsula which cut sharply into the railroad's freight business.
*** Ilwaco's Mayor Brumbach, who had attended the groundbreaking ceremonies over forty years before, addressed the citizenry from the rear platform of the train.
Taps was sounded from an old bugle, and as the 3:30 train departed for the last time a salute was fired from the town cannon, to be answered with a long trailing whistle from the locomotive.
[44]By the summer of 1931, all the structures (save for the Megler terminal), the engines rolling stock of the railroad had been sold to a scrapping firm in Portland for $28,000, and the rails and ties ripped up from the roadbed.
These sources may have helped Feagans as he traced down at least four passenger coaches that had been lifted off their trucks and converted into housing units in various locations in Long Beach.
The Ilwaco freight depot, which was in a derelict state in the early 1970s, had been restored and permanently preserved as part of the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum.
North of Long Beach, the life saving station still remains, although several remodeling efforts and overgrown shrubs and trees obscure the original architecture.
