Today a casual traveler driving east from the Comptche Store would never imagine the busy logging scene along the valley floor that went one 140 years ago. The headwaters of the Albion River in our time look like a creek winding along the road, but way back when…
From the Mendocino Beacon August 13 1881. “Mr. N.E. Hoak, superintendent of the Albion (Lumber Company) informed us about 75 men are working in the woods and running three four-yoke ox teams. Logging is to begin in a fine timbered gulch on the south side of the Albion River and a railroad will be constructed over a half mile in length. Rails are common T-iron and laid 40-feet apart.
Cars consist of two four-wheel trucks with a frame on it to carry logs so constructed as to allow them to make short curves with perfect ease. Only one wheel on each axel is fast to it, while the other is free to revolve around it. This will allow the wheels to revolve independently of each other and saves friction otherwise caused on the curves where the wheels on the outside have a longer road to travel.
(Note: Logging engineers and railroad engineers were always creating newer easier ways to save time, wear and tear, and money.)Two cars each carry a log as much as seven feet in diameter and 16 feet long, or several smaller logs, and are coupled together and drawn by horses and make 12 to 15 trips a day. This is a great savings from the old way of dragging logs on the ground.”
Consider all this was to get the logs to the Albion River next to what is now the Comptche Ukiah Road where they could be floated to the sawmill in Albion, about 12 miles away as the crow flies. Inquiring minds would love to know how long this went on before dirt and debris filled the river bed and turned it into a wandering stream you can easily jump over today at the same location.
Mr. Hoak owned the ranch on the north side of the road that later was owned by the Grimes family, then recently the Oscar Smith family on the eastern edge of the Comptche Valley before a traveler starts up the hill at Philbrick’s. Today it’s all forest again and meadows and with no indication what a busy place it once was long ago.
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