Ilwaco Railway and Navigation Company - Decline and Abandonment

Decline and Abandonment

After 1913, business fell off for the railroad, and would never come back to that peak. Even so, the owners continued to make some investments in the line, such as completing the relaying of the line with 56-pound rails all the way up to Nahcotta. A paved highway was completed from Portland to Astoria which caused river passenger traffic to fall off. The T. J. Potter was condemned at the start of the 1916 season and not replaced, which cut off direct water access to the Long Beach Peninsula from Portland (the source of most of the tourist business) to the railroad's dock at Megler. The railroad still ran the steamers Harvest Queen and Nahcotta down the Columbia until 1921, but apparently only on the Portland-Astoria run. This left only the previously-thought inferior route of taking a train from Portland to Astoria and then a steamboat (usually the Nahcotta) to the Megler dock.

However, by 1920, the real competitor for the railroad had become the automobile. A paved highway on the south bank of the Columbia was completed in 1916, running from Portland to Astoria. On May 1, 1921, regular automobile ferry service was initiated from Astoria to a dock at McGowan, west of railroad's dock at Megler and closer to the Long Beach Peninsula. Now people could drive their automobiles all the way to Astoria and onto a ferry to take them over to the Long Beach Peninsula, without the need of either railroad or steamboat.

Ferry traffic quickly rose, and the ferry company, owned by Captain Fritz S. Elving, rapidly built new ferries (Tourist, Tourist No. 2, and later, Tourist No. 3) and dock facilities. The ferries departed from a specially-built dock at 14th Street in Astoria which included a ramp to allow rapid loading and unloading of automobiles. Pacific County, Washington helped out the Elving Company, giving them a $400 a year subsidy, and probably more importantly, building a road on pilings around the rocky promontory at Fort Columbia that the railroad had been forced to blast a tunnel through.

In 1926, the Union Pacific Railroad tried to best the Elving company by building their own automobile ferry, the North Beach. Union Pacific had ferry slips built at Astoria and at Megler. Although the North Beach was a well-built vessel, launched on April 28, 1927 with fanfare, and making its first run on July 6, 1927, North Beach could never manage to compete with Captain Elving's boats. J.W. McGowan, a businessman of McGowan, owned stock in Elving's ferry company, and he made it difficult for the railroad to build a road over his property to their competing ferry dock at Megler. Union Pacific shut down ferry operations to Megler in September 1930 selling to one of its employees, claiming they'd lost $40,000 per year in the ferry business.

Roads were extended and improved in the Long Beach Peninsula in the early 1920s. At the same time freight business fell off sharply for the railroad. Steamboat connections were lost both at Nahcotta and Columbia River terminals. Meanwhile, the railroad was still trying to pay the expenses for the expansion of the Megler facilities to accommodate the ferry enterprise.

In 1925, motor truck operators in Astoria started using the ferries to transfer directly over to the Long Beach Peninsula which cut sharply into the railroad's freight business. The railroad calculated that the line had suffered losses of $300,000 from 1925 to 1928. Apparently the railroad then hit on the idea of forming a new subsidiary, the Astoria, North Shore and Willapa Harbor Railroad, selling stock in the railroad to local residents, and then using the proceeds from the stock sale to buy out its losing operation. Supposedly the new operation would return the route to profitability by operating cheaper small diesel-electric engines and cut its expenses by 90%. The plan also included a new ferry for motor traffic and used of trucks instead of rail to deliver freight. There were some problems with the legality of the stock proposal, as the sale could not proceed without the approval of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Local opposition was high, and the plan eventually came to nothing.

This left abandonment of the line as the only realistic business option. In that time, abandonment of a common carrier's route required the consent of the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Union Pacific sought this consent, and following a hearing, on July 12, 1930, the railroad obtained permission to abandon from the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission. Asay summed up the terrible financial condition of the railroad at this time:

There was no question that the line was financially hopeless; passenger traffic had declined from almost 33,000 riders in 1924 to only 10,700 in 1929. Operating revenues amounted only to $18,622 in 1928, while expenses hovered at nearly $85,000. Worse, the O-WR&N had incurred a deficit of $127,000 rebuilding the Megler terminal and roadway for the ill-fated ferry service.

The last train was run on September 9, 1930. Feagans describes the scene as follows:

With Clem Morris at the throttle, engine No. 2, dragging a coach and the combine, made its leisurely way south from Nahcotta and then returned. Mrs. Taylor, of Ocean Park, who had been on the first train in 1889, was a prominent passenger on the last one. On the engine the peninsula residents hung a mourning wreath for a railroad that had served them well for 42 years. *** Ilwaco's Mayor Brumbach, who had attended the groundbreaking ceremonies over forty years before, addressed the citizenry from the rear platform of the train. Taps was sounded from an old bugle, and as the 3:30 train departed for the last time a salute was fired from the town cannon, to be answered with a long trailing whistle from the locomotive.

By the summer of 1931, all the structures (save for the Megler terminal), the engines rolling stock of the railroad had been sold to a scrapping firm in Portland for $28,000, and the rails and ties ripped up from the roadbed.