Thorp Grist Mill

Thorp is a small town near I-90 on what we call the East Side. It’s the east side of Washington where Dino got most of the votes. Lots of Seattle folks drive I-90 to watch football games in Pullman, to pick apples in Yakima, and to taste wine in the Yakima Valley.

There’s also John Wayne Trail State Park trail. You can walk, ride a bike or horse, or have a picnic on the trail. Some folks like to think you can get over the mountains on the trail.

Long ago when I was just a kid, in the 1800s, people used to buy bags of flour. Honestly, I don’t know why anyone would want to buy flour. You can buy hundreds of things already made out of flour at Safeway.

People around Thorp in those days got agitated and decided to build a grist mill. Grist is what they call grain that’s ground into flour. It also refers to the quantity of grain that’s ground into flour in one batch. Just in case you thought I didn’t know what a grist was.

After the mill was built folks around Thorp would carry wheat to the mill and say something like, “Hey, Miller, grist this!” Fights broke out until everyone realized the farmer was just asking the miller to make a batch of flour. Grist is one of those interesting words. It seems to be an action word that annoys people, but it’s really just a noun, not a verb. So you can readily see why people wanted to fight over it.

The grist mill at Thorp used a water turbine mounted horizontally in the irrigation ditch. The turbine was connected to the main shaft by a large leather strap with a 90 degree twist. The main shaft had numerous wheels that were connected by many other leather belts that turned the grinding machinery. Cows lost their skin over this mill.

All the water stays in the irrigation system. Many other mills use a vertical wheel that turns as water runs over the top and drops into the creek. These usually have a higher water source. There was also had a saw mill that got its power from the irrigation ditch turbine. That part is gone.

In the early 1900s the water turbines were used to generate electricity. Not many folks in Thorp had computers so it served OK. If they needed more power it could be brought in by train, I think. Anyway, the Milwaukee Road had a depot in Thorp.

Another interesting feature at the Thorp mill is the old ice pond. Northern Pacific trains would stop there to toss ice into refrigerator cars. The pond was 23 acres and provided ice for the local community as well. That is when it was frozen. When the weather got above freezing one has to assume the ice was hidden in cold dark places. Another mystery for further research – where did they hide the ice in summer?

The John Wayne Trail passes close to the mill and people can stop at the Ice Pond Park for a rest. I-90 travelers may also stop in for a visit.

To me, the main attraction of the mill is the mechanical complexity. The grain travels up into the top and down for the various grinding processes using a spider web of wood races. It takes several grinding stages in order to get the finest flour.

The mill also made livestock feed which was a courser grind. I don’t know if you could call it grist. Feed of this type is used to fatten out cattle just before they’re made into quarter pounders with cheese. The bonus is they got more cow skin for the drive belts. Economic theory in action.

Sometime in the future we may once again see passenger rail service along the I-90 route. Right now Amtrak runs the Seattle – Chicago train further north via Stevens Pass. That pass was named for an early Washington State pioneer in building passes. However, right now we don’t have passenger trains near Thorp.

Which brings us to my plan: BNSF currently runs freight trains through Thorp on the old Northern Pacific right of way. Passes right by the old ice pond. I think it’s about time we get back to passenger rail service across the state. BNSF would probably be OK with this.

Their line follows the Yakima River down through Yakima and then through the wine tasting country to the Tri-Cities. Do we have to call it “Trines” now? We need to check with the folks in Northern Indiana. Oh, I know; if Trine gives us the money to get a passenger train going then yes, we’ll change the name.

Wouldn’t it be great to relax in a train over the Cascades, have lunch at the Thorp Grist Mill, taste a gallon or two of wine in the Yakima valley, spend the night at the Trines, take in a football game in Pullman, and head back to the rainy side without ever having to drive on I-90? If you have a bag of wheat you could drop it off on the way over and pick up flour on the way home.

Al

If you click on a photo it gets bigger. Amazing, isn't it, but they don't all do it.?.

Election Results 2008

Well the Sound Transit proposition won. We’ll get more miles on the light rail system. They’re planning a ring around the Puget Sound bathtub.

Bellevue has an area of low level development and high level asphalt east of the main downtown area. There was a Safeway distribution center, Coke warehouse, and a lumber yard among hundreds of other expansive type places.

Metro Transit has a big bus parking lot in the area. Burlington Northern provided rail freight on its now closed on the eastside. In fact the rail line kind of defined the boundary of this area.
Bellevue’s no longer proud of the low density business. For years those businesses paid tax money into the city because they had such large chunks of ground. Now the downtown high rise development pays most of the commercial tax and these places east of the tracks are being left behind.

A lot of the big space businesses are pulling out and heading for places where the property tax rates are lower. This leaves some big empty warehouse and parking areas. Bellevue wants to control what goes in there. Or at least set a lot of conditions.

One of their ideas is to use that area as a kind of landing zone for the eastside light rail. Sound Transit is hoping to run the rails over the lake and into downtown Bellevue. They think a lot of people will ride. A small part of the Link will potentially use the BNSF line. And then past there we’re looking at some maintenance facilities.

Which has me wondering – Is Bellevue going to have as much fun as Seattle?
Seattle has the South Lake Union Trolley. It goes up and down for little reason. I pass by that way about once a month and I see bright trolleys but nobody riding except the driver. Bellevue could have one of those.

Seattle also has a tunnel as part of the light rail line from downtown to Sea-Tac. Bellevue has hills. It seems logical to find some way to have a tunnel in the eastside system. That’s how it could reach Newcastle!

I-90 is part of Ike’s Interstate system. In the 1930s they began hauling rocks and dirt from Maple Valley (it use to be Maple Hill) and dumping it into Lake Washington. The goal was to construct a mid-lake land bridge between Bellevue and Seattle. Well they finally gave up and installed a four lane floating bridge in 1940. The fill was named Mercer Island and in order to save face they made it a city and let people build houses on it. We’d never get away with trying to fill in a lake these days – too many whiners.

Anyway, Sound Transit wants to run the East Link Light Rail on I-90. So I’m wondering who they have to ask. The feds probably think they still own the highway, but you know how they are.

Washdot wants to use the other floating bridge for the light rail line. That’s the one everyone thinks is about to sink. Thus it needs to be replaced immediately or at least before 2050. One of the big arguments is whether to make the new pontoons bigger than they need to be. Here’s why: people in Seattle want to keep it to four lanes. But Washdot is pretty sure that if they need to make it six lanes someday they’ll have to replace those pontoons with bigger ones. So why not make them bigger now? In addition they may want to add light rail. So now the pontoons are really big. But they’re under water so what’s the big deal? Cost. Building pontoons much bigger than the approved roadway would annoy toll payers and Timmy the nut.

Timmy would start an initiative campaign that in essence would require pontoons made out of old plastic bags. And at some point the Supreme Court in Olympia would declare it null and void, but the process would add years and millions of $$$ to the cost. And maybe the old bridge would sink during all this.

See, the problem with Timmy is his ideas sound OK at first but if you think them through it’s just not workable. For example some of the wagon trains on the Oregon Trail got diverted by a billboard advertising Mount Rushmore but when they arrived it was just a regular mountain. In those days nobody had carved presidents into mountains. Then winter came.

So the question for Washdot is this: “When will Winter come and stop your plans for light rail on SR 520?"

I also have a question for California: "Are you crazy? Don't you know your Supreme Court will have to set aside the Prop 8 result?" Two reasons: 1. in our 2008 enlightened time we all should realize you can't discriminate about whom a person chooses to marry. 2. It's almost completely certain the victims of this stupid initiative are not the ones that voted for it - so you can't have one group deciding what's right for another group. So Cal tax payers will have to pay for the courts to hear this nonsense and overturn it. They deserve it.

Al