THE RACE FOR AIRPLANE SPRUCE AND SHIP TIMBERS 



IT'S a strenuous race that's in progress along the 

 Oregon and Washington Coast. Spruce forests are 

 the goal. Building new railroads is the task. These 

 new lines will tap the spruce tracts this fall, and over 

 them will come the giant logs from whose white flesh 

 will be stripped the tough, clear stock for airplane beams 

 to win the war. Speed is the essential. It's the most 

 vital race that ever was run in Oregon. The welfare of 

 the world is at stake where soldiers labor on the grade 

 with pick and shovel, according to The Oregon Voter. 

 The railroad part of the spruce program is by itself 

 the most ambitious transportation project ever attempted 

 in one year in the Pacific Northwest, this 

 empire which transportation enterprise 

 has made celebrated for initiative and dar- 

 ing. It is true that there have been more 

 miles of railroad completed within severa 

 single years in the Northwest than this one 

 year of 1918 will see completed, but never 

 have there been so many miles of rail- 

 road conceived, located, surveyed, cleared, 

 graded, constructed, and completed all 



within one season all as part of the race for spruce. 



Some of these railroads will each carry as much ton- 

 nage daily as is carried by a transcontinental railroad. 

 This tonnage will be the logs from the spruce forests 

 to the water at the sawmills. 



This means that the railroads have to be built stout 

 enough to handle the traffic. They will have to be bal- 

 lasted simply rails on ties in the winter mud won't 

 do, especially under weather conditions such as prevail 

 in the mountains of the Oregon coast. 



Think what this ballasting means. Take the great 

 project centering around Yaquina Bay, for instance. 



LOGS PASSING THROUGH THE LOCKS 



These are the locks of the Lake Washington Canal at Seattle. Note the variety of the 

 logs. Washington, the leading lumber state, turns out three-fifths of the nation's 

 shingles alone. Her annual production is over a hundred million dollars a year. 



Photograph by Underwood and Undmwood 



CHAIN SKIDWAY LIFTING LOGS 

 The Seattle region is the main source of the lumber 

 supply in the West, the State of Washington leading 

 all other states in lumber production. 



Photograph by Underwood and Underwood 



It stretches from the celebrated Blodgett 

 spruce tract on the Yahats, south of Alsea 

 Bay, to the equally celebrated spruce for- 

 ests in the Siletz Basin to the north. To 

 reach these two districts there are sixty 

 miles, of railroad being built this year 



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