The
Denver Public Library has a nice collection of photos taken during construction of a snowshed at Embro on the Great Northern Railway in 1917. One of the pictures caught me eye, two snowsheds are visible in the background down in the Tye River valley east of Deception Creek.
Looking toward the snowsheds from Embro in July 2011.
I did some research and found that there were snowsheds at MP 1721.5 and 1721.6, both removed in 1937. These were the old style snowsheds with the timber cribbing rather than the concrete back wall. They were probably similar to this snowshed at Embro, shown here being dismantled in 1917 so that a concete wall could be built.
The snowsheds are 2/10 of a mile east of the Deception Creek bridge.
We decided to explore the area to see if there were any remains. Starting at the Deception Creek bridge we hiked east. We shortly discovered our first clue where a culvert crossed under the tracks. Water had exposed a few timbers that were once part of the retaining crib along the tracks.
Looking across the tracks we saw more timbers. We had found remains of the snowshed at MP 1721.5!
We followed the creek up the hill and found this flume. This was probably built to prevent the creek from eroding the ground under the snowshed, we found a short section but it most likely went all the way down to the tracks to the culvert. You can see the top of the flume is resting on timber cribbing, further
down the hill it has collapsed and is on the ground but at one time it
must have been attached to the timbers in the foreground.
To try and visualize this, here is another picture of the Embro snowshed being dismantled. Our snowshed was probably similar to this. I have drawn a line to show how the flume may have been located under the snowshed. Of course all this wood is gone now except for the timbers that rested on the ground, I suppose they were not salvaged because they were rotted. We were able to get an idea of the size of the snowshed by following the timbers and spikes from end to end.
A modern example of heavy timber construction, the retaining wall for the road under the Foss River bridge.
Bob Kelly has kindly provided us a copy of Authority For Expenditure 53267. Reasons and necessity for extension, improvement, or other change: Timber in these structures decayed and expense of renewal not warranted in view of fact we have not had a slide over these sheds since they were erected in 1916.
We found this about 30 feet up the hill from the top of the snowshed. It looks like a winch drum, a piece of iron to the right of the worm screw is broken. It may have been used when the snowshed was removed, or maybe during construction of the BPA transmission line a few hundred feet up the hill.
This 10 x 10 was probably at the top of the snowshed. The roof, most likely 10 x 10s, probably butted up to the big rocks. The copper pipe on the right is my brush whacking stick.
These timbers are just above the tracks.
The concrete wall of the Embro snowshed can be seen from the tracks at MP 1721.6
I suspect these two are not employed by BNSF.
Keesha did not share our interest in the snowshed discovery.
King County Engineer's Office Stevens Pass short line revision survey August 1924.
