The Wooden Pacific Logging Tram | In This Valley | Issaquah History Museums

All aboard the Wooden Pacific! Actually, unless you were a log, you wouldn’t have been welcome to board the “Wooden Pacific.” It was a special tramcar system for bringing logs down the steep slopes of Tiger Mountain to the mill at High Point. It was called the “Wooden Pacific” because the tramcars ran on rails made of wooden poles about 10 inches in diameter (rather than steel rails).

Stationary steam donkey engines were used to convey the tramcars up and down the steep slopes utilizing cables and pulleys. The grade of the route ranged from 10-40 percent – far too steep for conventional railroads. Cog railroads were sometimes used for such steep-slope applications, but were much more costly than the Wooden Pacific approach. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the loggers of yesteryear, when confronted with the problem of getting those logs down the mountain, came up with this ingenious solution.

This “Wooden Pacific” name was a pun on the name of the “Northern Pacific” railway spur that served the High Point Mill in those days. This spur was part of what was the Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railway that was first brought to Issaquah and High Point in 1888. Northern Pacific bought the SLS&E in 1896, and served the High Point mill during the years of the Wooden Pacific (1915 to 1928).

At the peak of its operation, the Wooden Pacific was comprised of three segments which extended a total of 12,000 lineal feet up Tiger Mountain (about 2.3 miles). The first segment of about 5,000 feet extended from the mill pond (now covered by I-90) up the mountain to about the elevation of 1,000 feet. From there, the middle segment took it another 4,500 feet to a landing that intersected with the West Tiger Railroad grade (at about 1,900 feet of elevation). The upper segment took the line another 2,500 feet, nearly to the summit of West Tiger Mountain.

I have a special interest in the Wooden Pacific as my grandfather, Thomas Lee, worked in the 1920s operating a steam donkey engine on the line. He had lost his left hand in an accident in the High Point Mill, so his job as steam engineer may have been a practical job assignment in accommodation of his missing hand. Maybe it’s easier to operate the levers and valves of a steam donkey than to buck a log with a cross cut saw with one hand. Or maybe he just liked to blow the whistle.

Apparently my grandfather was proud of his time as steam donkey operator. When he was retired he would answer the question of his former occupation as “steam engineer.” Of course, he had many logging and mill jobs over his life, but this was the one he chose to use as his answer to this occupational question, which causes me to think he considered it to be his most noteworthy of jobs.

You can still see remnants of the old Wooden Pacific on the northern slope of Tiger Mountain above High Point. The “High Point Trail” roughly follows the route of the old tramway.

At the starting point of the High Point Trail is the most substantial and enduring artifact from the Wooden Pacific. A small concrete bridge remains on the abandoned road that parallels I-90 – a road that was once the main route over Snoqualmie Pass. The bridge appears to be there to allow the small stream to pass under the road, but that belies its original purpose. It was the underpass which allowed the Wooden Pacific tramcars to pass under the roadway and arrive at the mill pond of the High Point Mill.

I-90 now covers the location of the old mill pond. If you examine the underside of the old bridge on the side toward the mountain, you will see numerous grooves worn into the concrete which are the telltale marks left by the steel cables used to lower the tramcars down the mountain – cables that were stretched to the donkey engine 5,000 feet up the mountain slope. Those cables left an indelible signature of a remarkable logging operation that we can observe 90 years later.

Thomas Anderson is a docent for the Issaquah History Museums.