The Sugar Pine Lumber Company was an early 20th century logging operation and railroad in the Sierra Nevada.

Unable to secure water rights to build a log flume, the company operated the “crookedest railroad ever built.

[3]: 39  The company was also a pioneer in the electrification of logging where newly plentiful hydroelectric power replaced the widespread use of steam engines.

After an $8 million investment in 1923, it set records for California's annual lumber cut but quickly exhausted its timber holdings.

[5]: 143 Fresno and Madera County competed to be the site of a new sawmill and railroad terminus to be built in the San Joaquin Valley alongside the Southern Pacific line.

[1] The Sugar Pine Lumber Company could not afford to build a single private railroad from the valley to the mountains.

The Minarets and Western Railway connected with the Sugar Pine Railroad at the Wishon switching yards at Bass Lake.

[2] From there, the Minarets and Western flat cars were pulled up a 10.82 mi (17.41 km) standard gauge railroad to Central Camp, the base of logging operations in the woods.

[1] The Sugar Pine Railroad railway was built at a consistent 4.5 percent grade that wound through a series of sixty-two 20-degree curves.

[5]: 122, 145  This required the Sugar Pine Railroad to run a different set of 2-8-2T locomotives where the water is carried in tanks mounted on the engine to increase tractive power.

[8] From Central Camp, 150 mi (240 km) of logging rails were laid to reach outlying timber tracts.

[5]: 145 In 1927, Sugar Pine ordered a unique tank locomotive, designated a Minaret engine after the nearby mountain peaks.

This arrangement was called “The Man Train.”[3]: 79 Central Camp was the Sugar Pine Lumber Company's base of logging operations supporting five hundred people living together in the woods.

The Republican reported:[3]: 43 Central Camp, the little capital of the sugar pine hills, is hidden away in a grove of towering trees.

Huge buildings have been erected that are substantial enough to stand for 75 years or more, even in the trying weather that exists during the winter when snow piles up from six to eight feet high.

Comforts and conveniences that would be found at the country’s finest summer resorts are in evidence everywhere.Built at a cost of $600,000, the investment was elaborate for what was ultimately a transitory work site.

Electricity greatly reduced the risk of forest fire, did not require a supply of water or fuel, and provided instant and continuous power.

[1] The Pinedale Mill was known as the “finest sawmill in the west,” delivering an average cut of 100 million board feet a year.

The facility was immense, featuring the world's largest sorting table with room for 230 grades of lumber, in addition to 80 acres (0 km2) of drying yards connected by 40 mi (64 km) of narrow-gauge railroad tracks.

[13][14] In 1931, RKO Pictures rented the mountain facility as the setting for Carnival Boat starring William Boyd and Ginger Rogers.

Despite their petition to open timber tracts east of Chiquito Ridge, the government wouldn't sell more trees to the company.

[3]: 97, 100, 108  [16] Following the bankruptcy of Sugar Pine Lumber, operations on the Minarets and Western railway were suspended by the railroad commission in September 1933.

Dozens of miles of former logging spurs and access roads have been merged into the National Forest Transportation System (NFTS).