Established
in 1937
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Steam engines without rails mechanized transportation in I.V.'s logging past
By ROGER BRANDT
For IVNIn 1885, a new mode of transportation hissed and chugged its way onto the wagon trails of Josephine County, creating a spectacle that no doubt startled all who gazed upon it.
The confusion was understandable because the contraptions looked and sounded like steam engines, but there were no railroad tracks for many miles in any direction.
The machines that caused all the commotion were called steam tractors. And by the 1890s just about every lumber company in the region had one to pull wagons loaded with logs to their mills, and lumber to the Southern Pacific Railroad depot at Grants Pass.
Some of these locomotives had wheels as tall as 7 feet, and were powerful enough to pull three or four trailers loaded with wood. It is not surprising that the processions of steam tractor and its trailers were often referred to as tractor trains.
They looked and sounded as though they could explode at any second, and, under certain circumstances, an exploding boiler could be quite a realistic concern. For example, as a steam tractor traveled uphill, the water in the boiler settled to the back of the heating tubes, which then allowed the front of the tubes to become red hot.
As the tractor went over a ridge and started downhill, the water would run to the front of the tubes and meet with the red-hot metal. The water then flashed into steam, causing a sudden burst of pressure that could cause the boiler to explode if the pressure was not released.
The driver and his assistant no doubt spent most of their travel time watching pressure gauges. They would want to assure that they maintained enough pressure to pull the load of logs, but not let it build up to the point that it might cost them their lives if the boiler exploded.
Steam tractors were an improvement over teams of horses or oxen, but they were not without their problems. The weight of the tractors and their loads of massive logs pounded deep ruts into the roads, sometimes getting so deep that conventional wagons with teams of horses had a difficult time traveling on them.
At one point in history the problem of road damage by tractor trains became so annoying that citizens rallied to have them outlawed. However, their practicality outweighed the problems they created.
And the chuff of the engines, straining to pull tons of timber and lumber, echoed from the slopes of Illinois Valley for more than 25 years before tractor trains were replaced by gasoline-powered semitrucks pulling trailers in the early 1900s.
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