[or-roots] The Foster dam in 1944

[Cecil Houk]

Oh yes!  There was a dam at Foster, Oregon in 1944.  But it was on Wiley Creek; not the Santiam River.

Back in those days when there was a lot of logging in the area logs were hauled to Foster to be loaded on to rail cars to be ship elsewhere.  Wiley Creek was dammed a short distance north of HWY 20 to form a pond into which logs were dumped a short distance south of the highway.  These logs were then loaded onto the rail cars on the northwest end of the pond.  My brother Doug and I spent hours watching the logs being unloaded from the trucks; what a splash.

One day Mom, Doug and I walked to Foster (from the Shea house), to buy groceries; a 1 mile trip.  There was some sort of commotion at the bridge over Wiley Creek, and we went to see what was going on.  There was a real "steam shovel" down near the rail road tracks with a run away boiler.  I don't know why it was there, but we were told that it was about to explode.  We retreated to grocery store; post haste.

The darn thing did not blow up.  What a disappointment.  :-)

Heavy rains years ago (I think in the 1960's), filled the pond with silt and debris that was never removed.  There was no further use for this facility as logging in the area dropped to almost zero.

Cecil


Cecil Houk, ET1 USN Ret.
PO Box 530833
San Diego CA 92153
FAX 619-428-6434
mailto:cchouk at cox.net
ANDERSON - BLAKELY - FORD - HOUK - KIMSEY - MOE - RULAFORD - SIMPSON
Searchable GEDCOM: http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/~cchouk
My web page MENU: http://members.cox.net/~cchouk/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/or-roots/attachments/20040518/a17af07a/attachment.html>