Clatskanie to Neverstill, OR

The Kerry Timber railroad was one of most unique logging railroads in Oregon, because it had one thing few temporary logging railroads had...a tunnel. It also had well over a dozen trestles between its run from Clatskanie to Neverstill, which at the time was called Horseshoe Camp.

The Kerry Timber Company, Wright Blodgett company, and the Oregon-Washington Timber company built the Kerry Railroad beginning around 1912, to gain access to almost 2 billion feet of standing timber. The railroad barely lasted longer than a decade, but in that 10 or so years, it established a rail line in the heart of Northwest Oregon that would serve entire communities and log every bit of those 2 billion feet of timber. Many spur lines were built off of the railroad during its short life and the logs were all hauled to the Columbia river where they were eventually floated to saw mills. The railroad was the only access into and out of the remote area, before roads were built. But in 1933, the Tillamook Burn erased some of the lines history by burning many of the old trestles to the ground and collapsing at least one of the ends of the tunnel. The other end is on private ground.

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