Trains Through Chehalis, Washington

Chehalis is the County Seat of Lewis County, Washington. It is south of Centralia and is overshadowed economically by the larger city. But Chehalis has a well-preserved downtown with late 1800s and early 20th century buildings. It was primarily a logging and railroad town in the late 1800s.  It also hosts the BNSF rail line, which cuts right through the center of town. 

Thundering through, get out of the way! (West Main Street, March 23, 2024, Panatomic-X film, 50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens, yellow filter)

These enormous freight trains come thundering through town. The lights flash at the West Main Street crossing, the barrier arms swing down, and you wait. The ground starts to vibrate, and these trains roar through at 40? 50? 60 miles per hour?

Track debris

Milky Way dairy transportation company

Milky Way is the largest milk hauling company in the Pacific Northwest. One of their terminals is right next to the rail line off West Main Street.

DrinkAMugAMilkAMeal (Samsung mobile phone photo converted to black and white)

Line off Prindle Street (250mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens, dark yellow filter)

Chehalis is a nice little town. The Willapa Hills bicycle trail starts here and continues west to Pe Ell. Eventually, it will be graded and paved all the way to Raymond. I need to explore Chehalis in more detail.

I took most of the photographs with a Hasselblad 501CM camera using Kodak Panatomic-X film, all frames tripod-mounted. 

Small Towns in Washington: Shelton

Shelton is the westernmost city in Puget Sound. It is northwest of Olympia at the western end of Oakland Bay. Travelers taking US 101 north to Port Townsend or Port Angeles at the north side of the Olympia Peninsula would pass right by Shelton. 

In the early-mid 20th century, Shelton's economy included logging, farming, dairying, ranching, and oyster cultivation. Logging was the heavy industry, and the Simpson Timber Company operated a mill complex at the waterfront of Oakland Bay. Formerly, trains carried logs out onto a man-made peninsula, where they were dumped into the bay. From there, tugboats moved log booms to other processing centers and mills, such as the huge mill in Everett. 

Frontier Antiques, S. First Street, Shelton

Bob's Tavern, S. First Street, Shelton

South First Street carries a lot of traffic, but the stores did not look too prosperous.

Rail yard off S. First Street with mill complex in the distance

Timber rail cars off S. First Street

From Google Maps, I could see the remnant of the lumber dump at the waterfront. But I could not personally get to the waterfront because it was it was part of the Sierra Pacific Industries work yard. Only employees were allowed in past security. 

Boathouse, Oakland Bay Marine

This was a rather frustrating visit because I could not reach the industrial waterfront. And the June sky was brilliantly clear but featureless (boring). But Shelton will be worth further exploring. Not far away, the High Steel Bridge over the south fork of the Skokomish River will be worth a visit. 

Dear readers, you know where this is going. What do you do after a few hours exploring and photographing? Well, that's obvious, go to the Cabin Tavern to eat Fish 'n Chips and drink cider. 

Post-photography health food at the Cabin Tavern, Shelton

Don't do it in the water

I took the black and white photographs on Kodak Panatomic-X film with my "Texas Leica," the Fuji GW690II camera. It has a superb 5-element Fujinon 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens that equals the lenses on my Rolleiflex and Hasselblad. I used medium yellow, dark yellow, and yellow-green filters to darken the sky. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film. 

At the BNSF Rail Yard, Tacoma, Washington

 Railroad photography is always interesting if you like industrial/infrastructure/machinery topics. There are so many shapes, patterns, and details to record. Your eye can wander around the scene and seldom run out of new details. 

Most rail yards today are off limits to casual visitors. This is true for the large BNSF rail and off Puyallup Avenue in the Port of Tacoma. However, East D Street, just east of the Foss Waterway, has an overpass with a pedestrian sidewalk! That was too good to resist. On a May day with interesting clouds, I parked nearby and walked along the overpass with my camera and a tripod. The roadway vibrated when a truck rumbled by, so I waited for a quiet period. These frames are 2400 pixels wide, so click to see more details.

Turntable, BNSF rail yard, Tacoma

Years ago, there was probably a roundhouse here, where steam locomotives would have been repaired and readied for duty. Turntables were necessary to spin steam locomotives because they did not run in reverse efficiently. Modern diesel locomotives can run in either direction.

Buildings in background are Tacoma Dome parking garages (Panatomic-X film, med. yellow filter)

Signal equipment

South side of rail yard from East E Street (Tri-X 400 film)

Train moving around south end of Foss Waterway en route somewhere south

Tracks below downtown Tacoma parallel to Dock Street (Kodak T400CN film, Leica IIIC, 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens, med yellow filter)

I took most of these pictures on Kodak Panatomic-X or Tri-X 400 film with my Fuji GW690II camera (the "Texas Leica"), with its EBC Fujinon 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens. This 5-element lens has amazing resolution. I bought the camera in 1992 and have used it irregularly over the decades. It is a big package to take on an air trip but is fine for car travel. I expose the Panatomic-X at EI=25, which normally requires a tripod. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film.

On the Waterfront - the Thea Foss Waterway, Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma and the Foss Waterway (from the United States Environmental Protection Agency)

 Port of Tacoma from Standard and Chevron Roadmap, ca. 1947 (from History Link Essay 5150)

The Thea Foss Waterway, formerly the City Waterway, is an inlet that extends south from Commencement Bay. It separates downtown Tacoma (on the west) from the Port of Tacoma. The waterway is partly man-made.* In 1902, the US Army Corps of Engineers dredged an existing inlet to a width of 500 ft and extended it south, making it suitable for wheat freighters. The waterway is now named after Thea Foss, who founded the Foss Maritime Company on the inlet in 1889.

The Port of Tacoma had a long industrial and shipping history. As summarized by the Environmental Protection Agency:

Site History, Contamination and Remediation

The Thea Foss Waterway is the westernmost of five waterways that make up Commencement Bay’s industrial waterfront, and is located next to downtown Tacoma. Starting in the late 1800s, the area supported shipbuilding, oil refining, chemical manufacturing and other industries, as well as the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Northern Pacific owned much of Commencement Bay’s south shore, and created the Thea Foss Waterway by damming one arm of the Puyallup River.

Over time, industrial activities contributed to the contamination of soil, groundwater and bay sediment with heavy metals, phthalates, petroleum-based products, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and pesticides. Stormwater also contributed to sediment contamination; much of Tacoma’s urban drainage pours into the Thea Foss Waterway.

In the early 1980s, Ecology identified sediment contamination in Commencement Bay and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studied the area. In 1983, EPA added the Commencement Bay Near Shore/Tide Flats site to the Superfund program’s National Priorities List (NPL); it was one of the program’s first sites. Encompassing 10 to 12 square miles of shallow water and land, and involving over a million cubic yards of contaminated sediments, it was also one of the program’s first mega-sites. The Thea Foss Waterway contains three of the enormous site’s eight contaminated sediment problem areas, which make up one of its four project areas.

During my previous life at the University of Washington, Tacoma was still a heavy industry city. When the wind blew from the south, "Aroma of Tacoma" reached all the way to the U District in Seattle. Yum.

The City of Tacoma coordinated with Tribes and bought abandoned properties along the shore, partly funded clean-up, and rebuilt shore protection. I never worked professionally on any marine sediments in Tacoma and know very little about this monumental clean-up effort. To a casual visitor today, the waterfront is quite inviting. But there is still industry and railroad infrastructure, so just my type of photographic subject matter. This time, we will look at the waterway and some of the adjacent area. (Click any picture to expand it and see details.)

Foss Waterway looking south towards the 11th Street bridge from the Foss Waterway Seaport (Tri-X film, Fuji GW690II camera with 90mm lens)

11th Street bridge view north from the Public Esplanade (T400CN film, Leica IIIC, 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens, yellow filter)

The 11th Street bridge, also known as the Murray Morgan Bridge, opened in 1913. In 2013, the City of Tacoma revitalized and restored this historic crossing of the Foss Waterway. 

Repair sheds, photograph looking east from 1199 Dock Street (T400CN film, Leica IIIC)

East 21st Street Bridge from Dock Street Extension (Panatomic-X film, Fuji GW690II camera)

The handsome cable-stayed bridge opened in January of 1997. It dominates the skyline over the Foss Waterway. 

Downtown Tacoma and the south end of the Foss Waterway

East D Street, view north from East 11th Street overpass (Tri-X 400 film)

East 11 Street overpass

Holding on for the ride, East D Street

I set up my tripod and a locomotive trundled along down the middle of the street. I like interesting  places like this. 

Steel warehouses, East F Street (Tri-X film Guji GW690II camera)

Dear Readers, you know where this is going. I often ask this question. What to do after a day of wandering around the harbor and taking photographs?

Salmon BLT sandwich at Fish Peddler

Why, it is obvious. Drop in at Fish Peddler right on the Foss Waterway for a salmon bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. Wash it down with a local IPA. I really like Tacoma...... 

The black and white photographs are from Kodak Panatomic-X or Tri-X film. I used my Texas Leica, the Fuji GW690II rangefinder camera. Its 90mm ƒ/3.5 5-element lens is superb, easily the equal of the Zeiss lenses for the Hasselblad camera. And this Fuji has a larger negative, resulting in an amazing amount of image data on each frame.  

Footnote

* This is another example of how many coastal features that we now see in the USA are partly man-made or were greatly modified by construction or alteration of the local and upland environment (such as dams on rivers). Many parts of our coasts are not "natural," especially near coastal inlets and urban areas. Even remote shores have changed because of dams on rivers trapping sediment. 

Into the Woods Again: Squaxin Park in the Snow (Oly 13)

Near the Squaxin Park trailhead (off Flora Vista Dr NE) 

It is summer in Olympia. The days can be hot (90º deg. F), but the nights are cool. Compared to my previous homes in Vicksburg, Houston, Athens, Karachi, and Rangoon, summer here is a delight. Still, let's cool off with some memories of the February 25 snowfall. This was the second snow of the 2023-2024 winter, and it was too good to resist. I drove to Squaxin (formerly Priest Point) Park with my tripod and Hasselblad and broke out a roll of Kodak's famous Panatomic-X. It is a slow film (EI = 25) and may not be the best choice for a gloomy afternoon under dense trees, but with a tripod, you can use as slow as shutter speed as needed. Most of these snow scenes were ½ or 1 second exposures. (Warning: no urban decay here, just "pretty" pictures.)

Looks like a furry chapeau on a stump

Heading home, time for a coffee

The Hasselblad works reasonably well in cold weather. I can use the controls with thin gloves. Loading a film back in the snow would be frustrating, so if in doubt, load a spare one in advance. For the pictures above, I used 50mm, 80mm, and 100mm Zeiss lenses, all with no filters. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film.

I hope you all enjoyed this quick visit to winter.

Into the Woods Again: Squaxin Park in Monochrome (Oly 06)

Squaxin Park (formerly Priest Point Park) is a botanical wonder just north of downtown Olympia off East Bay Drive NE. I have photographed here in color with my little digital Fuji X-E1 camera. How about monochrome? (Warning, "pretty" pictures below; no urban decay.)

Ellis Cove and view west to East Bay (Fuji Acros film, Pentax Spotmatic F camera, 28mm ƒ/3.5 SMC Takumar lens)

Ellis Cove (Fuji Acros film, 28mm SMC Takumar lens)

The temperature plummeted on January 11 (2024) and some snow fell. That was too good to resist. I walked to Squaxin Park but was surprised that not much snow had made it through the dense canopy down to the ground.

Samarkand Rose Garden (Kodak Panatomic-X film, Hasselblad 501CM camera, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar lens, yellow-green filter)

Near Ellis Cove (Panatomic-X film, 100mm ƒ3.5 Planar lens)

Near Ellis Cove (Panatomic-X film, 100mm ƒ/3.5 Planar lens, yellow-green filter)

On East Bay Drive, a dense multi-trunk tree often catches my eye.

East Bay Drive NE (Kodak Tri-X 400 film, Hasselblad 501CM, 100 mm ƒ/3.5 Planar lens, 1/125 ƒ/4)

Another snow fell on February 14, and I returned to Squaxin Park with the Hasselblad. Maybe I will show those frames in mid-summer..... 

Thank you all for exploring Squaxin Park with me.

Moving Out: Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana

Background

Isle de Jean Charles is a small fishing community at the south end of Island Road in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. It feels like the end of the world. The town was the home of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians for almost 200 years. All the houses now are elevated on piles or stilts, and there is limited dry land. One low and vulnerable road, a spur off of Louisiana 665, leads to the town. 

Because Island Road is often flooded, sometimes for days, and safety services can not be guaranteed for the residents, the community needs to move. According to a January 2024 BBC article, "This Louisiana town moved to escape climate-linked disaster," the residents of Isle Jean Charles are in the process of relocating to The New Isle Community, much further inland and safe from flooding. Building a major levee system to protect the town from hurricane surge was too expensive, and relocation was the only alternative.

Sediments of the Mississippi Delta

The title of the BBC article is somewhat deceptive. Rising sea level is making the road to Isle de Jean Charles more vulnerable to storm surges and even normal high tides. And the rising sea exacerbates other issues throughout south Louisiana such as infrastructure, drainage, pollutants, and sea water incursion further into the swamps. But at least four other major factors account for land loss in southern Louisiana:

1. The sediment is sinking. All this marshy deltaic sediment came down the Mississippi River. As the immense sediment mass of the Mississippi Delta dewaters over centuries, it compresses. 

2. Oil and gas producers dredged channels through the marshes. These channels allowed seawater to enter the marshes and kill fresh-water marsh vegetation. Without the root structures and emergent plants, storms washed away the limited soil. And the lack of plants means minimal new sediment gets trapped.

3. The path of the Mississippi River has been channelized by levees for 200 years. During floods, sediment no longer spreads out over the adjacent delta. When the US Army Corps of Engineers dredges the navigation channel, they place some of this material onto the nearby marshes. Openings in the levees also allow flood water to spread. But these two placement and diversion mechanisms still do not replicate the pre-engineered river when it flowed unconstrained.

4. Less sediment is brought down to south Louisiana. Compared to the era before the late 1800s, levees line all of the lower Mississippi River and its tributaries. The era of mass tree deforestation is over. Farming practice considers erosion control much more than it did 100 years ago. Dams on the Missouri and Ohio River systems trap sediment in their ponds. The Corps of Engineers reduces bank sloughing and erosion with concrete mats. In effect, we are retaining sediment on the continent. 

This is a complicated topic. A vast technical literature examines sediment, hydrology, climatology, and geotechnical issues in Southern Louisiana.

A March 2019 article in The New Yorker, "Louisiana's Disappearing Coast," is a readable and detailed description of the factors that cause land loss. 

John McFee's seminal 1987 article in The New Yorker, "The Control of Nature, Atchafalaya," describes the heroic efforts to prevent the Mississippi River from changing its path to debouch into the Gulf of Mexico at the Atchafalaya delta, not the present delta.  

Isle de Jean Charles in 2019

Bayou or boat canal parallel to Island Road, Isle de Jean Charles, April 28, 2019

Pedestrian bridge over boat canal

My wife and I drove out to Isle de Jean Charles in spring of 2019. We were on a trip to explore the Acadian Parishes of Louisiana and revisit some towns that we had seen before, such as Dulac and Lafayette. We had read about Isle de Jean Charles and wanted to see the town. Driving on Island Road felt like we were on a boat crossing the marshes and lakes. In many stretches, the pavement was only a foot or less above the water.

We stopped at the marina. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and the town gents were drinking beer and having a good old time out on the deck. They said they had seen the plans to move everyone to a new town and were somewhat skeptical. Some of the town residents already had homes further inland. They watched the tide predictions, and if high water or a tropical storm was predicted, they would head north to stay with relatives and wait for the weather to pass. The gents also wondered if the plan was to move the Chawtaws out and then the developers would build condominiums. 

Wood crossovers to provide access to Island Road

Boat canal almost filled with vegetation

Elevated Isle de Jean Charles house

This was a nice afternoon. The few people we met were friendly. But we were not in town long enough to get a sense of how many people lived there at that time. It felt quiet. If the BBC article is correct, Isle de Jean Charles may be much quieter soon. I am glad that my wife and I had the chance to visit when it was still possible.

I took these photographs with a Hasselblad 501CM camera on Kodak Panatomic-X film using 50mm and 80mm Zeiss lenses. Some were tripod-mounted. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film in Xtol. I scanned the negatives with a Minolta Scan Multi film scanner. Panatomic-X is a mid-century wonder product for this type of subject matter.