Sumpter Valley Railway
Oregon
The narrow gauge railroad that threaded through the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon was built for timber but made its name on gold. The Sumpter Valley Railway was incorporated in eighteen ninety and began hauling logs out of the mountains to Baker City. By eighteen ninety-six it had reached the mining town of Sumpter, where shafts ran twelve combined miles underground.
The line pushed on to Whitney, Bates, and finally Prairie City by nineteen ten, opening the entire upper valley to commerce. It carried ore, lumber, livestock, and passengers through country that would otherwise have been nearly unreachable. Competition from trucks and automobiles killed it.
The upper twenty miles were abandoned in nineteen thirty-three and the whole line shut down in nineteen forty-seven. The passenger station here, built in nineteen ten, survived and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A restored section of narrow gauge track near Sumpter still runs excursion trains through the valley the railroad once owned.
