Washburn Historic Waterfront
Bigelow / Hines Railroad Trestle
In the early days of Washburn, the waterfront was filled with saw mills. The A.A. Bigelow Mill (1887-1902), later to become the Hines Mill, was the largest of three major sawmills in Washburn. It rested on pilings that ran directly out from the present 6th Avenue West. Logs were hauled to the mill by the Washburn & Northwestern Railroad, a narrow gauge system that was owned by the mill. Once the logs reached the lake, they were fed into the mill ponds at log dumps. To handle the massive amount of timber coming out of the Bayfield Peninsula, a trestle was built 1500 fee out into the bay, just east of the main Bigelow/Hines mill dock. This trestle left the shore about where this sign is now.
Today, except for a few broken off pilings and some crib rock, there is very little left of the trestle itself, but its path is strewn with hardware from the logging cars. Everything from hand tools and tie-down chain, to pieces of the logging cars and coupling systems lies right where they were left the last day of work. Seeing these artifacts lying on the bottom, it’s tempting to picture a frustrated rail worker watching a link pin drop into the water while the engineer whistles impatiently to pull out for another load of logs.
Marker can be reached from 6th Avenue West south of Lakeview Drive, on the left when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
