by Louis Hough
Fire destroyed the Navarro sawmill in the wee hours of Nov.7, 1902. It was the old Navarro Mill Company, situated at the mouth of the, Navarro River, which had been idle since sold at auction nine years earlier. (It had been founded in 1861 as H.B. Tichenor & Company, was reorganized in 1888, burned down in 1890, was rebuilt, but soon went broke and then lay dormant.)
The Beacon reported a story of derring-do during the fire. Some “quick-witted, cool-headed” individuals broke into a shed and rescued two steam locomotives. They knocked the blocks out from under the wheels, pushed one engine and then the other, until they got them rolling downhill away from the conflagration. The two prize locomotives sat safely from the flames that reduced most of the mill to ashes.
Following the fire, the mill property and timber stands were sold to some eastern and local capitalists who also acquired fourteen miles of track, a shipping wharf just outside the river’s mouth, and those two lucky locos.Both were built in 1888 by the San Francisco firm of Rix & Firth and delivered by sailing schooner to Navarro. They were wood burners. One was a big saddle-tank 2-4-4 steam locomotive and the diminutive sister was an 0-4-0 steamer. The numbers refer to the wheel arrangement: 2-4-4 meant two wheels on the pilot truck, four driving wheels and four wheels on the trailing truck. The 0-4-0 meant four drivers only. They became known as Molly and Dinkey. “Dink” is a Scottish term meaning small and neat. The 14-year-olds faced an uncertain future; both were “orphans” for a long time. Molly was purchased in January 1907, was disassembled, loaded on wagons, and hauled from Navarro up to Mendocino to be put to work for the Mendocino Lumber Co. Along with her came 70 tons of rails from Navarro to be used for sidings at the mill and track extensions of the logging line upriver. Designated Number 3 on the company roster, she was affectionately named Molly.
Reassembled at the Mendocino mill, Molly was hoisted on to the sturdy flat-bottomed paddle-driven barge named Maru. With her stern wheel thrashing, Maru nudged upriver about five miles to the railhead in the woods. Molly made several trips aboard Maru on Big River, down to the mill shops for overhauls and then back to the railhead. On one visit, she was converted from a wood-burner to oil fuel and had her saddle-tank replaced with two water tasks mounted alongside the boiler.
Her job was hauling log grains on the main line, a nearly water-level route. Molly made about two round trips a day, hauling a string of empty cars up tracks alongside Big River, then out along the Little North Fork, dropping off a car or two at the decks. Log decks were where logs were loaded on the flat cars. On Molly’s return trip she coupled on more and more cars laden with logs, some logs that measured eight feet in diameter. Her destination was “the dump” where the cars were tipped and the logs tumbled a couple of dozen feet into Big River. The logs were gathered into “rafts,” and when assembled were guided downriver to the millpond by the Maru.
Meanwhile, tidy little “Dinkey” was chuffing about at the Glen Blair mill, tugging empty log cars up tracks laid beside the winding Pudding Creek to the landings farther up the valley. (Landing is another name for a log deck.) She was doing pretty much the same work as Molly.
The Glen Blair mill began operating in 1886. Like at all early timber and lumber operations, oxen or bulls along skid roads to the log pond adjacent to the sawmill hauled logs. In 1903, the animals went to pasture when tracks were laid into the woods and a shay type geared locomotive performed their work. It was part of extensive modernization undertaken by new owners. Work resumed in August 1903, but it was another few years before a refurbished Dinkey first appeared and began steaming along the rails into the forest. But, that’s another story…
To read more, you can purchase a copy of Denise Stenberg’s book, “Glen Blair: The End of the Line,” at the Kelley House Museum.