These are the recollections of the men who were on the ground, authentic so far as human memory can make them.
The best work on the operation of the railroad has been done by Harold Hagg, "Logging Line: A History of the Minneapolis, Red Lake, and Manitoba," Minnesota History 43 (1972), 123-135.
But the only river available for Nebish logs was the Mud River, a small, sluggish stream. Today, until it reaches the bridge just before Red Lake, it flows through culverts. It could carry logs, but experience had shown not enough.
Henry Kolden remembered the problems of driving the Mud River:
In 1896-97, Arpin Brothers had the contract for getting timber out of the Nebish area to Red Lake. They took out very little timber. In the first place there was deep snow so that the men had difficulty getting into the woods.I worked for Arpin at Nebish in the winter of 1896. . . .The Arpins, from Arpin Wisconsin, had a contract from the St. Hilaire Lumber Company. . . . Arpin lost $9000 that winter because of the 31/2 to 4 feet of snow in that big timber. We had two teams on every log and that winter we had three crews - one coming, one working, and one going. (ML, p.169)
When I was log-driving into Red Lake on Mud River in May of 1896 it rained for eighteen days straight. I remember we worked with the logs every day through all this rain. The logs wouldn't go downstream because Red Lake was backing up. The lake must have been eight feet higher than it is now. (ML, p.206)
The Mud River was the largest river close to the Nebish area timber. The difficulty in driving the river and the distance of the timber stands from rivers that could be used probably gave the St. Hilaire Lumber Company the idea of building a railroad to bring out the logs.
There was good timber in the area. Kolden speaks of "big timber with butt logs scaling 1600 feet. Stumps were 5 and 6 feet across. Most of it was white pine." (P.169) Archie Logan said, "that was nice pine. It was't so big but it was thick and straight and sound. It was nothing for each camp to load 6 or 7 cars of 41/2 or 6 thousand feet every day."(ML, p.173)
[Archie Logan was a well known character from the Buena Vista -Nebish area. He was an experienced woodsman and a great talker. He contributed to Dr. Vandersluis' History Writers Club.]
If logs could be gotten to Red Lake, a minimum of eight or nine miles away across the Red Lake Indian Reservation, they could be floated across the lake and down the Red Lake River to the St. Hilaire and Crookston sawmills. The problem was to get the timber to Red Lake. The St. Hilaire Lumber Company decided that a railroad would solve the problem.
They made a bold decision. The Nebish area was a landlocked wilderness with only primitive trails. There were no railroads in the county. The nearest railheads were fifty miles away in Walker (Cass County) or Fosston (Polk) County. The locomotives and rails would have to be hauled in summer or skidded in winter. But the company had to have a railroad to get the logs out.
goes back to June 25, 1897, when the Department of Interior granted permission to the St. Hilaire Lumber Company of Minneapolis to "construct a temporary railroad for the purpose of transporting timber to market from a point about two miles east of the township line of T153 R33 on the south boundary of the retained Red Lake Indian Reservation northward a distance of 8 miles to the shore of Red Lake, following as nearly as possible the bank of the Mud River."
In the spring Bourgeois was assigned to the engineering staff as chainman. He was in camp and present for the construction of the railroad.
The line followed the bank of the Mud River, according to the permit. The line selected was west of the river,
which we crossed a short distance down-river from a dam which had been built for flowage to land logs into, from which they were to be hoisted on to cars and hauled to Red Lake when the railroad was completed.The Mud River was crossed three times. (ML, p.20).
The loggers were throwing logs along the right of way for the train to pick up even before the rails were laid.
This grading was done by shovels, wheelbarrows and scoops but mainly by one yard dump cars running on track which had been transferred by the Halvorson Richards Company from the Chicago River drainage canal .... On the Red Lake job this track was laid from the cuts to the fills below, and these one-yard cars were filled by hand and allowed to run by gravity down to the fills. They were then pulled back empty with horses, using a pulley arrangement. Lots of men had been imported from the Chicago job, and they filled those cars for ten cents a piece and made good money at it. They kept from three to five cars going all the time, and the company furnished the horses. A lot of the rail beds were made with logs and trees as fill.... (ML>/I>, p.20).The company used the standard grading equipment of scoops and graders pulled by horses.
The grade was to run to the landing at the mouth of the Mud River on Lower Red Lake, later the site of Redby, though Redby was not platted until 1904. The line ran along the lake so the logs could be dumped onto the ice after the lake was frozen. At first, logs were simply dumped on the lake shore. Later a trestle a quarter of a mile long was built to make the dumping more efficient.
Victor Dally describes:
Steamboat Landing was on the bank of the Steamboat River at first, but then a dock of tamarack poles was built in a wash which had been plowed out by propellers. Steamboat captains did not like the dock. . . . . Steel was hauled in scows and the locomotives were hauled across Leech Lake on the ice during winter. (ML, p.170)
The Red Lake-Leech Lake trail was just a country road picked out through the woods following high ground, avoiding stream crossings, and avoiding the cutting of trees with resulting stumps. It was an Indian trail traveled mainly on foot or with pack horses or light wagons. (ML, p.21)
The trail, first authorized by Congress in the Old Crossing Treaty of 1863, after completion ran by Pike Bay of Cass Lake, crossed the Mississippi where it enters Lake Andrusia, passed by Wolf Lake and Grace Lake and the southern end of Turtle River Lake. It ran by the west side of Big Turtle Lake, by Buena Vista, by Lake Puposky, and on up near Lake Nebish, the site of Old Nebish - the southern terminus of the Red Lake line. From there, it ran to the agency at Red Lake.
To carry the heavy, oversized loads for the railroad, the trail had to be widened and corduroy placed where the bogs would give difficulty. Dan Gracie was in charge of this operation. The O'Brien Trail was used to carry loads between the Leech Lake Trail and Old Nebish.
Frank Smith, Bemidji, said: "The steel they [Halvorson and Richards] sent up here, besides the dump car steel, was light but the railroad they built was standard gauge. . . . It came up in 1897 . . . ." Archie Logan added, "The steel that came to Nebish was off that narrow gauge road on Gull Lake [near Brainerd]. (ML, 170)
Archie Logan related:
The man who hauled the railroad up here from Steamboat Landing did it for $9.00 a ton, steel and everything. After he worked for a year he went broke and the company had to finish it. When the company gave it up Billy Hyatt and Chippewa Joe and Al Hazen grabbed it. They always had a lot of horses. . . . It took 2 or 3 years to haul up the rails and locomotive. The first winter they had three camps on the road where they changed teams. In the summer they had to load the material on wagons and it broke all the wagons. Steel is awful stuff to haul. (ML<, 171)
Some of the trucks were left for winter transport and some were not taken to Nebish until the rails had been laid. (Hagg in ML, p.172)
George Kerr: About the early engines:
The four saddle tank engines off the narrow gauge at Gilpatrick Lake had no number but were named. Two of them had been widened to standard gauge and used as switching and spotting engines around Backus and Hackensack. However, in the winter of 1894 the snow was so deep that these engines were stuck in the snow most of the time and their use was discontinued. One of them, the Mollie, was sold to Halvorson and Richards of the Red Lake Transportation Company in the fall of 1896 dismantled at Walker by Harry E. Titus and Henry Poppenberg, loaded on a barge and towed to Steamboat Landing. This engine was small weighing 10 tons loaded with water and fuel. That winter it was hauled to old Nebish by two six-horse teams on tote sleighs over the Red Lake-Leech Lake trail.(ML, p.221)Frank King thinks "Engine #2 was . . . possibly from the Chicago Elevated RR." (ML, p.173)
An engine modified to standard gauge could run on the rails to Walker, but then had to be taken by barge to Steamboat Landing. From there it had to be towed some fifty miles to Nebish.
When the steel and other equipment was put in, this equipment was brought in overland from Steamboat Landing. It had come up as far as Walker over the Minnesota & International railroad then placed on rafts and floated to Steamboat Landing and finally hauled by teams northward through Buena Vista. When the cars and locomotive passed through town, Mr Dickinson stated that the men kept ringing the bell, and the comment was made that "the first locomotive in Beltrami County passed through Buena Vista."Excerpt from an interview written by Lloyd A. Halseth, WPA Historical Project No. 3769, following an interview with Mr. Dickinson on June 9th, 1938.
Leonard Dickinson, his son, also describes the scene, as it had been told to him:
The entire Red Lake Railroad was hauled up from Steamboat Landing through Buena Vista and built from Nebish to Redby. That's where it went first. It wasn't built from Bemidji to Nebish. It started at Nebish....they took the locomotive through Buena Vista and, if I am not mistaken they had 24 head of horses on it. They hauled all the rails through there on big logging sleighs - big 40 foot logging bunks - on frozen ground. The bunks were 12 by 12, or 12 by 16 feet long and hewn out of oak (In Our Own Backyard, p.21)
I made two or three trips to Bemidji that winter for our supplies and household goods. On one of the trips I recall seeing a locomotive loaded on a big sleigh out on the ice of Lake Bemidji ready to be hauled to Nebish with horses, to be used on the new railroad from Nebish to Red Lake. They went across the lake to where Birchmont is now and then across the country (North Country History, 1981, p. 11)Newcomb probably did not see the first locomotive, but the second. He says "that winter," which according to other dates in his piece would have been the winter of 1898-1899. But the first locomotive went up in time to begin operations in July, 1898. He very likely saw the locomotive hauled by Tom Smart, described by August Becker in Once Covered with Pine. (pp.119f)
Tom Smart hauled an engine for the Halvorson-Richards railroad, using a big logging sleigh. Starting from Bemidji he went north across the ice of Lake Bemidji, continued north on the road to Movil Lake and then over the ice of the Turtle Lakes to Buena Vista, where he hit the Leech Lake - Red Lake trail and followed it into Nebish. At that time Austen and Bigger hauled the railroad stock and cars. [This is not the original stock of the Red Lake Transportation Company in 1896-7 but an addition to it later, as also described by Ralph Dickinson.] Tom Smart's logging sleigh was pulled by six horses. It had twelve foot bunks. The railroad engine was not very big and was easily thrown off the track if it hit anything, but it could easily be replaced with a derrick.
There were several dams on Mud River. The first one was at the Charles Durand homestead, where there was a cook camp and a sleeping camp to take care of the driving crews. Logs were landed in Mud Lake and in Rice Lake. Below Rice Lake there were two more dams, one of them named for George Lydick, who drove the Mud River extensively in the days of the Red Lake Transportation Company. These logs were hoisted out to cars at Nebish and railed to Red Lake Landing and dumped in the lake. (ML, 275)The number of logs driven down the Mud River was certainly not negligible for the company. The Bemidji Pioneer reported March 10, 1904 that "about 10 million feet on the Mud River will be driven through to Red Lake, and most of the other logs will be hoisted and hauled to the Red Lake Landing. Altogether the timber to be handled will aggregate about forty million feet."
The company had a big camp which could sleep 300 men. The railroad and woods crews all stayed together in the camp, which consisted of two big log sleeping shacks right together." Bob Mitchell adds that "there was not much to see except a store and the headquarters for Halvorson Richards on the east side of the lake. Nebish Lake was two separate lakes with a strip of land between them. Old Nebish was right on the high ground northeast of the shore."(ML, 173)The company needed its shops to assemble the train. The locomotive, the "Irish Mollie" or the "One Spot," had been disassembled for hauling. Bourgeois says that Weston, who was to be the engineer, worked at reassembling the engine. He was helped by Paul Garrigan, who was to be the fireman. Callahan was the conductor; his job was to build the caboose. Marshall was building the logging cars, all chained, single-bunk Russell cars without stakes. Lee Worth recalls that his uncle and partner in Buena Vista sawed considerable bridge timber and car beams for the railroad. (NC, 1975, p.13) Charles Richards was the only partner who stayed in Nebish.
The shops and roundhouse in Nebish which had been burned in 1902 were reestablished in Redby.
Redby was becoming a village.
A trestle or rollaway was built out into Red Lake so the logs could be dumped on the ice. When the ice melted, they could be boomed over to the outlet of the Red Lake River and driven down to any of several sawmills.
The first year here they dumped their logs from the cars into Red Lake without a rollaway. They claim it cost them a dollar a thousand to break up the log piles to get them into the lake in the spring. The next year they put in rollaways and broke them for 10¢ a thousand. (ML, 173)
To say that the railroad was nine miles long is a misrepresentation. That was the length of the line from Nebish to Red Lake landing, but the whole purpose of the line was to bring in logs, especially from the Crookston holdings in the Nebish area, and to do that the company had to build spurs into the surrounding stands of timber.
Lake Nebish was a good place to locate. There was no village then, but there was already the Arpin lumber camp, which could sleep 300 men. Lake Nebish itself was a good collecting point for logs. (The first rail line built into Nebish had a trestle into the lake so that logs could be hoisted onto cars.) It was also reasonably close to the Mud River, where there were dams to collect the logs that could be hoisted onto the cars. Logs not hoisted could be driven to Red Lake.
Lake Nebish was close to the stands of timber. It was also just off the Leech Lake - Red Lake Trail, connected by O'Brien's Trail, which gave it wagon access to Red Lake and to Buena Vista. From Buena Vista toters could go to Bemidji; to the Walker railhead; or to Fosston, end-of track for the Great Northern from Crookston.
The railroad gave its owners an advantage in getting timber out of the woods: harvesting the logs was not confined to the winter months. Traditional loggers had the timber cut and hauled to a lake or river in the winter while the ground was frozen. With a railroad, logs could be taken to a lake or landing and shipped out at any time of year. Many were simply deposited on the right-of-way.
At first the Red Lake line was limited to Red Lake as a landing. Later, after it was extended to Bemidji, where it could connect with other railroads as well as the Mississippi River, it had more options.
Fire last Sunday evening totally destroyed the entire plant of the Red Lake Transportation Company, including the round house and machine shops. Halvorson and Richards are heavy stockholders." (Quoted in ML, 174.)Frank King reports "locomotive #1 was said to have been destroyed in an engine house fire." (ML/I>, 173) Charles Vandersluis, Sr., who did not get to Nebish until 1902, said: "I saw no engine house or round house or any car shops . . . ."(ML, 174)
Irwin and O'Brien had a contractor on Whitefish Lake, Harry Botting, on the northeast side of Whitefish Lake, and I don't know that this was homesteaders' timber. There were about 3 million feet and taken out by the railroad the first year the railroad was built. There was a headworks in Whitefish Lake to haul the boom across. . . .There was a trestle in Whitefish Lake built right along the shore of the lake over the water so the logs could be gotten up the hoist. (ML, 275)The Whitefish Spur raised both hopes and expectations that the Red Lake Line would be extended to meet the Minnesota and International at either Turtle River or Farley. Whatever the hopes of those living near the line, the Whitefish Spur was never built farther.
Also in 1903, according to Frank King, "the company acquired title from the government for a permanent right-of-way for their railroad." (ML, 173) The original permit was for a temporary right-of way.
Although the Red Lake line was a logging road, it carried passengers who were friends or had some connection. Carl Durand remembers as a child how the "conductor took me up in the cupola in the caboose, and there was a severe thunderstorm at the time." NC, 1973, p.26) Ernie Bourgeois mentions traveling from Redby to Nebish in the caboose.
The railroad company never seems to have had much interest in developing Old Nebish, as it came to be called, or the site that became Redby. Halvorson and Richards had only to please itself and the Crookston Lumber Company, which it served. It had no passengers to complain, no freight or mail to go astray, and no set schedules to meet or miss. Old Nebish by the lake simply grew.
The one obligation the road had was to make money. The company had put crews in the woods and built a railroad to carry logs to Red Lake, but it could not turn a profit. In fact, the line lost money. Archie Logan tells of a conversation he had with Charles Richards, though he does not give the date:
Halvorson Richards lost a pile of money. Six dollars was their contract. Richards asked me, "What am I going to do? I have 350 or 400 men working here and do you suppose these men are going to work every day on salt pork? (ML, p.173)Charles Wight seems to connect the fire and the building of the Whitefish Spur with the railroad's financial collapse.
The Blackduck American on December 16,1903 reported that the Red Lake Transportation Company had declared bankruptcy. On January 13, 1904 it reported that the stock from the company's store at Nebish would be removed to Bemidji for sale. But the work did not stop. Walter G. Marson took over as manager and trustee. Hagg comments, "In the spring of 1904 log-hauling continued under the trusteeship."
In reporting the bankruptcy, the Blackduck paper saw a bright side: "It is hoped that this turn of matters will hasten completion of this road to Turtle or Farley - thus opening up the great Red Lake country to the world." Connecting with the M&I would have given the Red Lake line a connection into Bemidji or Blackduck.
An action to foreclose was brought in the Beltrami District Court and on 6/28/04 the line was sold for $42,000 to the Minneapolis, Red Lake and Manitoba Railroad Company, which had been incorporated 4/04 with Charles A. Smith, president and John Lind and Andres Ueland, the latter two law partners. . . . The only other bid was $10,000 offered in behalf of the Crookston Lumber Company. (ML, 174)The Red Lake Transportation Company was gone. In its place would be the MRL&M Rwy, expanded to serve the growing needs of a growing area.
Copyright 2001, 2003, 2006, 2008 William and Madeline Sutherland