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Posted by David Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 01:14:36 :
In Reply to: Re: OT: Steam donkey posted by J. Veitti [69.144.190.102] on Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 22:02:31 :
There used to be a pretty good sized donkey rusting away in an overgrown field somewhere between Everett and Granite Falls (Washington), possibly near Getchell Road. I'm pretty sure it was still there when I moved to Everett in '82. Since then one of two things has probably happened -- suburban sprawl caught up to it and there's a giant subdivision of identical houses in that field, or the blackberries and alders grew over it and it's now sitting in the woods. It definitely had the look of not being anybody's restoration project. There are still pits in that area that were dug during the early logging days to get water for the donkeys. The water table is high (hence lot of big cedars) and they'd just dig a shallow water pit near the setting for the donkey.
It would be kind of amazing if it was still there, but I have seen entire houses hidden inside blackberry vines in Western Washington, and trucks and trailers disappear under blackberries all the time. I left my camper in a friend's field for a couple years once, and by the time I went back for it, only one corner was sticking out of the blackberries.
There's a donkey engine up Marble Creek here in North Idaho that's even listed on the Forest Circus map as an historic site. I guess the reason they think it's safe to tell the public about is there's no road anywhere near it so nobody's going to haul it off at this point. An old-timer told me about one that he knew of half-way up a mountainside not far from my place, but it was real clear from his recollection just which mountainside it was halfway up, and he's dead now so I can't ask him any more. I could be hiking up and down a lot of mountains before I stumbled across it. It's intriguing to think it's out there somewhere, though. He also said he knew of a big locomotive that had run off the rails and down into a ravine somewhere south of the Joe, and he had pieces from the wreck of a Lockheed Electra mail plane that had flown straight into a mountain long ago and hit so hard that the engine was in fragments. The locomotive has apparently been re-discovered, and I've seen other references to the missing Electra, so perhaps his donkey engine is really still out there too.
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