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Noel V. Bourasaw, editor 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284 Home of the Tarheel Stomp Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug
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Interurban route, schedule and mileposts
Part 4 of 6-part series

This wreck at Rocky Point in 1929 was one more nail in the coffin for the Interurban

Route Interurban 1923
Bellingham to Mount Vernon line, south

[Depot or stop . . . mileage]
Bellingham depot
The depot was at the Pike block at Elk [now State] street and Holly, near where the Greyhound Bus terminal was later constructed.
South Bellingham [Fairhaven] 2.46 miles
Happy Valley 3.5 m
Hibridge 4.28 m
Grandview 5.36 m
Chuckanut 6.8 m
Wildcat cove 7.76 m
Clayton bay [begins trestle over bay] 9.2 m
Seawood 11.15 m
Samish 12.32 m
Blanchard 13.64
Edison 15.68 m
Sunset 17.3 m
Field [now beside Field cemetery] 18.53 m
Roray 21.20
[then the name for town of Allen . . . can anyone tell us more about the Roray family?]
Maiben
[unknown source for the name . . . do you know?]
Burlington 23.25 m
Varney
[now roughly the location of Fred Meyers store parking lot or south of it] 24 m
Riverside 25.55 m
Clear Lake road [now College Way] 26.05 m
Mount Vernon 27.5 m
The depot was at the northwest corner of Kincaid and Main streets, where the Vaux Pharmacy was later built. This was the site where W.H. Franklin set up the Mount Vernon Electric Co. in 1891. He sold his plant to Stone & Webster in 1911.

This depot named Varney stood just south of today's Fred Meyer store. We believe that the old wooden structure stored on blocks on the lots north of the store's parking lot is this very same structure. We hope that a Burlington old-timer can confirm this hunch for us and can also tell us about the Varney family.

Burlington to Sedro-Woolley line, east

[Please help us with these names and the families who may have inspired them]
Burlington
Depot at Virginia street. If you look closely, you can find remnants of brick paving at Oak street, close by the north-south railroad tracks.
Miller .75 m
Dempsey [presumably named for the Dempsey brothers of Michigan, who financed the Puget Sound & Baker River Railroad, which crossed the tracks at this point, on the way to Sterling] 2.13 m
Sterling 2.7 m
Kimsey [this is mysterious. We know that the Kimsey family lived south of the tracks, by the old Sterling school. But why stop at both places? Was the Sterling stop at the original depot for the Seattle & Northern railroad, slightly west of Kimsey?] 2.75 m
Austin 4.08 m
Sedro-Woolley [Ferry street depot] 4.7 m
All remnants of the depot site have been covered by concrete. As in Burlington, the Interurban depot was placed near the railroad depot; in this case, the Northern Pacific depot was just a half block away, on the east side of the NP tracks, just north of Ferry street, across the street from the Pioneer Hotel, now the parking lot for the hardware store.

Interurban's first day of operation, Aug. 31, 1912
and schedule information The Electric Railway Era in Northwest Washington, 1890-1930, Daniel E. Turbeville III, 1979 On August 31, 1912, the new interurban celebrated its formal opening. At 10 a.m. a special train left Bellingham

. . . carrying practically all of the officials of the cities of Mount Vernon, Sedro-Woolley, Burlington and Bellingham, together with the officials of Whatcom and Skagit counties, the members of various commercial organizations, and a large representation from the Stone and Webster Club of Washington.

Each town along the line received the train with festivities, banquets and speeches. Even an unfortunately typical summer rain 'had little effect in dampening the enthusiasm of those participating.
Pacific Northwest Traction began regular passenger and freight service the following day. Three of the new interurban passenger cars operated on the Bellingham-Mount Vernon line at ninety-minute intervals. The first car left Bellingham [daily on regular schedule] at 5:30 a.m., arrived at Mount Vernon at 6:45 a.m., and started back to Bellingham at 7 a.m. The last round trip car left Bellingham at 11 p.m. and returned at 12:30 a.m., arriving in Bellingham at 1:45 a.m. The fourth interurban passenger car was used on the Burlington-Sedro-Woolley line. From 6:15 a.m. to 12:45 a.m. this car operated every ninety minutes. After the last run of the day, all of the cars returned to the Kentucky street car barns in Bellingham where a night crew performed cleaning and necessary maintenance on them.
Freight was handled by Pacific Northwest Traction at night after the last passenger cars had returned to Bellingham. The line's freight motor, No. 250, used the twenty flatcars and four boxcars built during the preceding year in the shops of Whatcom County Railway and Light. In keeping with the current notion of electric railways "opening up" new areas and new markets, Stone and Webster planned to handle mostly lumber and shingles until other types of local freight movement (fresh farm produce, milk, etc.) could be developed.
The opening of interurban service on the Northern Division of Pacific Northwest Traction was coincident with a tremendous upswing in the economy of northwest Washington. Although Whatcom and Skagit counties had caught only the last two years of the nationwide slump of 1908-12 due to a strong oriental lumber market, business in Bellingham and the Nooksack and Skagit valleys was somewhat stagnant until late in the summer of 1912. That the local as well as the national economic picture would soon improve was evidently foreseen by the financiers in Boston or the interurban would probably never have left the drawing board.
The harvest of 1912 was one of the largest in local history and all through the following winter Bellingham and the towns in the Skagit valley bustled with prosperous farmers. Real estate values began to climb and the number of building permit soared. In anticipation of the opening of the Panama Canal, the Whatcom Creek Waterway was dredged to allow ocean-going vessels to dock in the "heart of the city."

Links, background reading and sources

List of all stories about the Stone & Webster Interurban, with links and suggestions for further reading.

Story posted on June 12, 2005, moved to this domain Oct. 29, 2011
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Interurban route, schedule and mileposts Part 4 of 6-part series

Interurban route, schedule and mileposts
Part 4 of 6-part series