The Mayview warehouses
(note the tracks running up the hill behind the warehouses).
Courtesy of the Garfield County Museum.
The Mayview Tramway was built on a particularly rugged and isolated section of the Walla Walla Land District. Mayview town site, located in the northeastern section of Garfield county, sits on the edge of a series of cliffs that fall 2,000 feet or more into the Snake River canyon. Mayview is thirty two miles away from Pomeroy, which is located in the center of Garfield county. The Snake River forms a northerly arc around the Mayview area. Mayview farmers used the Snake River as a means of transportation. To reach and utilize the river the farmers built grade roads to the river banks.
On the Mayview (south) side of the Snake River there are only three roads leading down into the canyon in an eight mile stretch. The first of the grade roads from Mayview is 32 miles down river from Lewiston, Idaho. The first road is the Wawawai Grade, which is five miles long, and leads down to Offield Canyon and Offield Landing. The next road, Casey Creek, leads from Mayview onto Casey Creek Bar and is four and one half miles long. The final road, Ilia Grade starts at the west rim of the Mayview Canyon and descends in a serpentine series of switch backs six miles long, for a 2,300 foot drop. From Ilia Grade, it is eight miles to the next access road to the river.
As in other areas close to rivers, farmers from Mayview and the surrounding areas depended upon these three roads to deliver their grain to market. Alternative forms of moving the harvest to the warehouses on the Snake River came into being as harvests increased. Grain Chutes, Bucket Tramways, and Rail Tramways all provided these alternative transportation means. Each of these methods were effective in transporting grain into the river canyon, but the most elegant and involved method was the rail tramway at Mayview.
The Mayview Tramway began life in a canyon on the south banks of the river across from Wawawai. A "joint ownership association" of local farmers built it in 1890; and it was initially managed by J. N. Reed of Mayview.1 It was impossible, on this site, to build straight track and a curve at the bottom of the track derailed several cars. As a result it was moved, in 1891, 1/4 mile upriver to its present site, one mile northeast of the town of Mayview. The rails, at first constructed of two inch by six inch boards, wore out quickly. The operators nailed strap iron on the rails, but when the strap iron came loose it too would derail the cars.2 These board rails were replaced by iron rails in 1892.
The Mayview Tramway was unique in both its construction and statistics. The rails stretched 4,800 feet from the brake house at the top of the river bluffs to the bottom of the river canyon. The Tramway drops 1,800 feet in elevation. Following the natural contours of the ground, and using a narrow gauge track, there was no attempt made to create an even grade.3 "Some sections were sixty percent grade, others just steep enough to move the cars [with] only one small trestle, perhaps 250 feet long and six to eight feet high".4 The trestle connected the brake house on the bluff to the hill sloping down to the river. There was only one set of track, except at the half way point, where two set of tracks were laid side by side so that the down car and the up car could pass.
The cars resembled flat cars used on railroads today. The cars were ten to twelve feet long and rode on wheels three feet off the ground. There were two cars on the track at all times, one at the top and one at the bottom, each connected to a circular cable running the complete length of the rails. This cable wrapped several times around a wooden brake drum in the brake house at the tops of the line. The brakes relied on pressure to work, with a metal lever attached to accentuate the braking action. As a loaded car left the brake house it would pull the empty car to the top of the hill and the brake house. Each car was capable of carrying 45 sacks of grain, or 6.800 pounds per car. The tramway carried an average of 2,700 sacks of grain per day, or 378,000 pounds.
In the first years of operation, the only method of signaling when the cars were ready was to raise or lower a flag at the warehouse. A flag was run up the pole when an empty car had been attached to the cable, when a car was loaded at the brake house, the brake would be released and the car was sent down the track.6 After the first few years of operation a single line telephone system was installed between the brake house and the warehouses.
As farmers entered the tramway yard gate at the top, they drove onto a scale. After their load was weighed, they were assigned an unloading position along one of the feeder lines in the yard. The feeder lines were small gauge tracks laid out in a fan type fashion. Flatcars on the feeder lines were used to move the grain from the tramway yard to the brake house. Small flatcars were pushed out on this network of rails and loaded with sacks of grain. The farmers were directed to unload all of their grain in specific areas so that all the grain on one tramway car was from one farmer. For example; a farmer unloaded his first load in line 3, area D, his second load was unloaded on line 6, area D. The yardmen knew that the grain in these two locations belonged to the same man and loaded them out accordingly.6 The loaded flatcar was pushed to the brake house and unloaded onto the tramway car.
After a tram car was loaded and sent down to the bottom it was disconnected from the cable. An empty car was attached in its place and the loaded car was pushed onto a turntable, and moved into one of two warehouses.7
The turntable at the Mayview warehouses
(note the empty car ready to return to the brake house).
Courtesy of the Garfield County Museum.
The turntable and the warehouse track were on a level with the rafters of the warehouse.8 The car was pushed into the warehouse rafters, and a chute was brought up to the side of the car. Two men then slid the sacks of grain down to the sack pilers for stacking.9
The Mayview Tramway operated from 1891 to 1942 when the Grain Growers Co-op finally closed it. In its long history, it has been owned by G. L. Campbell and John Worum, John Worum individually, H. H. Houser, the Sperry Company and the Grain Growers from 1937 until it was closed.10
During the early 1900's, the tramway handled an average of 100,000 sacks of grain per year, or 14,000,000 pounds. During a record year, they shipped 120,000 sacks, or 16,800,000 pounds.11
There is not much left of the tramway now. Part of the loading platform is still there, although in a few years, it will have slid down the cliff. You can still see the old railroad ties scattered down the hill. There is even part of the trestle still visible. The massive brake shoes are still in place, although the bar to engage them is missing. Most of the brake house has been torn down or decayed away, but the large timbers used to support the brake drum itself are still intact. The readily accessible iron was salvaged by the Junior Chamber of Commerce during the World War II scrap iron drives. Any of the lumber in the brake yard was recycled long ago into barns, sheds or fencing. The ties used for bedding the tracks were left simply because of the difficulty in retrieving them from the cliffs.
1. Florence Sherfy. This Was Their Time (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1975), 99.
2. Arthur Victor. "The Mayview Tramway." The Pacific Northwesterner, 9:3 (1965), 40.
3. ibid., 40.
4. ibid.
5. Orlie Hannas, interview by author, 18 February 1991.
6.ibid.
7. ibid.
8. ibid.
9. ibid.
10. Arthur Victor. "The Mayview Tramway." The Pacific Northwesterner, 9:3 (1965), 42.
11. ibid.
Introduction
Geography
• Farming
• Transportation
• Grain Chutes
• Mayview Tramway
Bulk Handling
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Oral Interviews
• Maps
• Illustrations
Acknowledgements
• Comments
