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<p>Page 1 features of photograph of railroad between Seattle and the City Lighting Plant.
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<hr><p>The caption reads, "This railroad belongs to Seattle and leads to the City Lighting plant." In 1905, the only hydro plant owned by the city was on the Cedar River. No article in the 12-page issue that seems to elucidate that further, but Seattle historian Rob Ketcherside quotes the following from <i>Public Works in Seattle, A Narrative History of the Engineering Department, 1875-1975</i> (1978) by Myra Phelps, emphasis (and, of course, links) not in original. On page 135: "The site for the [City Light] dam [chosen by R. H. Thomson] was located about a half mile below Cedar Lake (renamed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Morse_Lake" class="extiw" title="w:Chester Morse Lake">Chester Morse Lake</a>, 1956). The best bid on lumber for the dam and construction was $35 per thousand feet delivered <b>at the rail head at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Bend,_Washington" class="extiw" title="w:North Bend, Washington">North Bend</a>.</b> Two million feet of lumber was needed and the dam site was at least three miles further up the river valley from the rail head. Permission was secured to build <b>a short railroad over which the Engineering crew hauled the necessary saw mill machinery by donkey engine to the power site at the end of the lake.</b> The mill was set up and was used to cut the lumber for shelter for the workers, storage of the mill machinery and all the lumber that was needed for construction of the dam and the staves for the water pipe, doing this at about a third of the bid price; the mill was then sold at a profit. Engineer Thomson had a small crew to install electrical equipment for the power plant as it arrived, and in 1904, one of the generators was placed in operation."
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Some of the geography of this may be clearer in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/washington/txu-pclmaps-topo-wa-cedar_lake-1911.jpg">this 1911 topographic map</a>.</div>
17 June 1905<div style="display: none;">date QS:P571,+1905-06-17T00:00:00Z/11</div>
This file was contributed to Wikimedia Commons by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Seattle_Public_Library" class="extiw" title="w:en:Seattle Public Library"><span title="public library system serving Seattle, Washington">Seattle Public Library</span></a> as part of a cooperation project. The donation was facilitated by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Public_Library_of_America" class="extiw" title="w:Digital Public Library of America">Digital Public Library of America</a>, via its partner Northwest Digital Heritage.<span style="text-align:left">
<ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://cdm16118.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16118coll24/id/4170">Record in source catalog</a></li>
<li>DPLA identifier: <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://dp.la/item/e310e5025030268952cffdcb7877477d">e310e5025030268952cffdcb7877477d</a></li>
<li>Seattle Public Library identifier: spl_mh_198239_1905_08_31</li></ul></span>