The Everett and Monte Cristo Railway was built to transport gold and silver ores from mines in the central Cascade Mountains to a smelter in Everett, Washington. After the first mining claims were staked in 1889, entrepreneurs began exploring the possibility of building a railroad to exploit the find. Construction began in April 1892 and the first train reached what became the town of Monte Cristo in August 1893. The mining boom ended in 1903. Poor ore quality and quantity played a role in the decline, but the failure of the railway to maintain service to Monte Cristo in the face of floods, landslides, winter snows, fires, and other disasters was also a factor in the collapse of the industry. Nonetheless, the railway hauled out approximately 300,000 tons of ore over the course of its operations.
The railroad found a second set of customers among the timber companies. Logging in Puget Sound began along the shore, where water transport to sawmills was inexpensive. By the early 1900s, however, much of the lowland forest had been cut. The Everett and Monte Cristo tracks gave access to large areas of virgin forest, so the railroad was used to move raw logs down to existing mills. As the railway pushed further into the woods, new sawmills and roof shingle mills were established, and finished lumber and shingles were also shipped out by train.
Tourism was a part of the business from the beginning of the railroad. The mountain scenery was then and still is an attraction. The first tourist excursion to Monte Cristo took place within days of completing the track. Weekend excursions with up to 500 passengers and a brass band took advantage of sunny summer days. A resort hotel, The Inn at Big Four, was opened in 1921 along the rail line for guests who wanted more than a day trip to the mountains.
Choosing the route for the railroad proved a fateful decision. Trying to save money on initial construction, the owners chose the shortest route between the mines and the smelter. This ran the tracks through the steep-sided Robe Canyon, in some places mere feet above the flood-prone South Fork of the Stilliguamish River. This five-mile stretch was costly to maintain and suffered repeated outages. Service was interrupted for hours to years at a time, stranding people, freight, and rail cars. There was never enough money for maintenance. Over time, revenue fell as the mines played out, the easy timber was cut, and the road network extended competition further into the mountains. The railroad lost money, but the final blow was the Great Depression, which collapsed demand for the forest products hauled by the line. Scheduled rail service was abandoned in 1933 and the tracks torn up in 1936. Today, much of the Mountain Loop Highway from Verlot to Barlow Pass runs on the abandoned railroad grade.
Ownership history
Rockefeller years (18921902) Prospector Joseph Pearsall staked the first claim in what was to become Monte Cristo on July 4, 1889. Word of his find set off a minor gold rush and dozens of mining claims were filed in the area. None of them had any real prospect of exploitation because there was nothing but a crude trail into the mining district, insufficient for hauling in mining equipment, construction materials, food, and other supplies, and hauling out ore to a smelter. A consortium of Northwest mining interests led by Fred Wilmans and Judge Hiram Bond, bought out many of the claims and began to explore bringing in a railroad. The Wilmans-Bond group hired John Q. Barlow to survey possible routes. He discovered what came to be known as Barlow Pass which connected the Monte Cristo district to the South Fork of the Stillaguamish River. The pass offered the shortest route to the Puget Sound lowlands and was ultimately adopted as the route of the Everett and Monte Cristo Railway.
At roughly the same, New York investment bankers Charles Colby and Colgate Hoyt, both of whom served on the Northern Pacific Railway's executive committee, were looking for ways to profit from their railroad's terminus on Puget Sound. They allied with Henry Hewitt to develop the town and port of Everett on Port Gardner Bay. The Colby-Hoyt investment syndicate was approached by the Wilmans-Bond mining group to build the railroad to Everett. An agreement was struck between the two groups committing the mines to produce a minimum amount of ore for 15 years and the railroad to ship it out at a fixed price. Fortuitously for the venture, Hoyt was friends with oil magnate John D. Rockefeller who provided the funding not only for the railroad, but also the Puget Sound Reduction Company's Everett smelter, the United Concentration Company's Monte Cristo ore concentrator, and a host of other investments in the area. As a result of the agreement between the two syndicates, The Everett and Monte Cristo Railway Company was incorporated on March 14, 1892. Construction began almost immediately.
Another railroad consortium, this time funded by local businessmen, founded the Snohomish, Skykomish, and Spokane Railway and Transportation Company on April 19, 1889. The "Three S", as it came to be known was intended to lure the western terminus of the Great Northern Railway to Everett by meeting the line as it emerged from the Cascade Mountains. The Three S obtained its right-of-way from Snohomish to Everett and began construction in 1891. The road laid at least 4.75 miles of track before running out of money in March 1892. The Colby-Hoyt group swooped in and bought the company for the Everett and Monte Cristo Railway Company for $400,000.
The Panic of 1893 hurt businesses and railroads all over the country. Compounding the challenges for the Everett and Monte Cristo, in June 1893, the British House of Commons issued a recommendation that Her Majesty's Indian mints no longer produce silver rupees. World silver prices fell from 80 cents per ounce to 64 cents per ounce almost immediately, and never returned to the higher price during the time Rockefeller owned the railroad. This hurt the Monte Cristo investment. By 1894, Rockefeller had invested $1,797,000 in the railroad, and another $772,000 in mines, the concentrator, and smelter. To put this in context, America's richest man was worth $42 million at the time. All of these mining-related businesses were losing money. He dispatched Frederick T. Gates, a trusted advisor, to investigate and take action. This began a decade-long struggle to recoup the investment.
The winter storms of 1897 that washed out the tracks ended rail service to the mining district for three years. The mines, the concentrator, and the smelter all shut down, causing further financial stress among the owners. Rockefeller, who had loaned money to several of the mines, foreclosed on their mortgages and took control of the failed companies in January 1899. This gave him complete control of all aspects of the Monte Cristo operations from mine to smelter. At least one newspaper opined that Rockefeller had purposefully decided not to repair the railroad so as to pressure the miners into this very outcome. After the floods of 1897, however, the railway had survey crews on the ground seeking a better route to Monte Cristo, suggesting that the Rockefeller team had legitimate questions about the wisdom of investing yet more money in treacherous Robe Canyon.
As Rockefeller struggled recover his investment, the Northern Pacific Railway wanted its own track into Everett to compete more effectively with the Great Northern Railway. A deal was struck and the Northern Pacific bought the Western Division of the Everett and Monte Cristo, previously the Three S tracks, from Everett to where they connected to its existing tracks at Snohomish on February 4, 1900. The price was $750,000. As part of the deal. the Everett and Monte Cristo Railway maintained the right to run its trains over these tracks. After the sale, the Everett and Monte Cristo Railway Company was reorganized. New officers were elected and the company was renamed The Monte Cristo Railway Company on August 29, 1900.
As the new century began, Gates and the Rockefeller interests had three related properties to dispose of. The first was the smelter in Everett, the second was the mines and concentrator in Monte Cristo, and the third was the railway that connected them. In March 1900, the railroad announced plans to rebuild all the way to Monte Cristo. No rationale was provided for the new investment, but it followed the collapse of a potential sale of the Rockefeller assets to German industrialists. Rockefeller may have concluded that it would not be possible the sell his Northwest businesses unless they were operating. No one would buy the railroad unless the mines were shipping ore, providing a revenue stream, and no one would buy the mines unless the railroad could haul ore to the smelter. In any case, the line was repaired as quickly as possible. He sold the renewed Monte Cristo Railway Company to the Northern Pacific Railway on September 16, 1902 for $512,412.89. He lost over $2 million on the sale, but achieved the long-term goal of exiting the money-losing investment. After the acquisition, the route became the Monte Cristo branch of the Northern Pacific Railway.
Northern Pacific years (19021915) The Northern Pacific invested heavily in the line in 1903 to improve the tracks in order to serve Rockefeller's mines better. He had other plans. He sold the smelter, the mines, and the ore concentrator to Meyer Guggenheim's ASARCO trust in September 1903. ASARCO bought the package in part to reduce competition from the Everett plant with its smelter in Tacoma. It had little interest in the mines and closed them at the end of 1903, significantly impacting the revenue of the Monte Cristo line.
With the drop in revenue, the Northern Pacific began to cut costs and defer maintenance on the line. The modern rotary snowplow that kept the line open in the winter was moved to other areas leading to long closures in the winter. The passenger cars went to the midwest for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. When the roof on the turntable at Monte Cristo collapsed under heavy snow in 1904 it was never rebuilt. Rock slides in Robe Canyon caused outages almost every winter, and with the reduced traffic, the Northern Pacific saw less reason to repair the damage. The Monte Cristo line had become a problem for the Northern Pacific, just as it had for Rockefeller.
Rucker years (19151929) The Rucker brothers, Wyatt and Bethel, were involved in a range of Everett businesses at the turn of the century. Both were active in banking and logging. They owned thousands of acres of forest land, and two sawmills. They employed 400 people in logging and in lumber mills. They were dependent upon the Monte Cristo line for their timber business, and had negotiated a series of annual contracts with the Northern Pacific for its use. When it came time to renew the agreement for 1915, the railroad refused. Instead, it offered to lease the entire road to the Ruckers for ten years. In order to secure their transport, they formed the Hartford and Eastern Railway Company and took over responsibility from the Northern Pacific in 1915. At the end of their 10-year lease, the Northern Pacific had even less interest in the Monte Cristo line and refused to renew the arrangement. The Ruckers bought the line In 1925 in order to keep the Northern Pacific from closing it.
The Hartford and Eastern, however, had as much trouble making money on the line as the Northern Pacific and Rockefeller before them. The railroad began losing money immediately after the purchase. In August 1929, the Ruckers sold the Hartford and Eastern to Puget Sound Pulp & Timber Company, along with the associated Inn at Big Four, their Lake Stevens sawmill, and 4,000 acres of timber land.
Logging Road (19291936)