2. The Willamette Locomotive

Standing before you is one of only six surviving Willamette locomotives in the world.

This locomotive was built in 1926 by the Willamette Iron & Steel Works of Portland, Oregon. Known as a Willamette locomotive, it belongs to a class of just thirty-three engines ever produced. Today, only six are known to survive, making this a rare witness to a nearly vanished chapter of railroad history.

The locomotive you see here is Construction Number 21, a 70-ton, three-truck geared locomotive originally built for logging operations in Southern Oregon. Weighing roughly 140,000 pounds and capable of generating nearly 32,000 pounds of pulling force, it was designed for one purpose above all else: moving enormous loads of timber through some of the most challenging terrain in the Pacific Northwest.

At first glance, it may look similar to other steam locomotives, but the Willamette was built for a very different job. These engines spent their working lives far from cities and passenger depots. They operated deep in the forests, climbing steep grades, navigating sharp curves, and hauling log trains over rough tracks that were often temporary.

Willamettes belong to a family of locomotives known as geared engines. Instead of relying solely on large driving wheels, a system of exposed drive shafts, gears, and cylinders distributed power to all of the locomotive's trucks. The result was slower speeds but extraordinary traction. In tests, Willamettes proved capable of pulling heavier loads while using less fuel than the Shay locomotives they were designed to improve upon.

Take a moment to notice the details.

The offset boiler. The gears running along the side of the locomotive. The exposed machinery that reveals exactly how power moved from steam to steel. Unlike the streamlined passenger trains that would later capture the public imagination, this machine wears its purpose openly. Nearly every visible component tells a story about the work it was built to do.

The Willamette itself was an innovation. Built after key patents on the famous Shay locomotive expired, engineers at Willamette Iron & Steel Works sought to create what many loggers considered an improved version. They incorporated features such as steel cabs, air brakes, electric headlights, superheaters, and redesigned trucks intended to provide a smoother ride and greater reliability in demanding conditions.

For the workers who operated these locomotives, the job could be difficult and dangerous. Steam locomotives demanded constant attention—maintaining boiler pressure, monitoring water levels, managing fuel, and keeping a complex network of moving parts running day after day. A broken locomotive could bring an entire logging operation to a halt.

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By the early twentieth century, logging railroads had become an essential part of the timber industry throughout Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Railroads made it possible to reach forests that had once been difficult to access and to transport timber on a scale never before possible.

The tracks themselves were often temporary. As logging crews moved deeper into the woods, rails could be pulled up, relocated, and laid again. In many places, the railroad followed the timber.

But forests held different meanings for different people.

For Indigenous communities, these landscapes were not simply sources of timber. They were places of relationship, responsibility, food gathering, knowledge, and cultural continuity. As industrial logging expanded across the region, both the land and the communities connected to it experienced profound change.

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Today, the Willamette rests quietly among the trees.

The steam is gone. The logging railroads it once served have largely disappeared. Many of the tracks that wound through the forests have long since faded back into the landscape.

But this locomotive remains.

Nearly a century after it was built, it offers a glimpse into a world of logging camps, mountain railroads, and changing forests—a world that helped shape the region we know today.

The locomotive no longer moves through the forest.

In a way, the forest has grown up around it.