Arizona Rails, Ruins, and Trails: Flagstaff Lumber Manufactoring Company\Flagstaff Lumber Company

The Flagstaff Lumber Manufacturing Company was established in 1909 when Ed McGonigle acquired the rights to 75,000,000 board feet southeast of Flagstaff (Trennert 1967-8, Stein 1993). Contruction on a line began to access timber in the Howard Draw, Newman Canyon, Elk Park Meadows and Hoxworth Springs areas. A new mill was built at the current Aspen Place at the Sawmill site. Anyone familiar with Flagstaff from as recently as the late 1980s will remember this as the site of the Stone Forest Products mill. I've got 1960 aerial photo graphs that clearly show a rail line (in use) running through Sinclair Wash on the NAU campus. The Urban Trail through much of this area was constructed directly on top of the grade. The line went through the general area of where Red Lobster is located and headed roughly south down was is now Lake Mary Road. The grade is visible just south of the Mobil gas station (on the current Urban Trail route), just south of the wastewater treatment plant and can easily be seen in numerous spots on both sides of the highway and then once again on the east side on and off all the way to the head of Walnut Canyon.

Although not clear on this Google Earth image, the grade here, just south of the wastewater treatment plant, is obvious when driving by on Lake Mary Road.

This section of the line is obvious from the road. There is a wye at this location. The two photos below are from this location.

Section of line visible to the right.

This area looks considerably different because it has been thinned since this photo was taken.

The line forked to the southwest and followed the general route of Forest Road 132 all the way to Howard Draw and beyond. By 1917 the Howard Draw/Coulter Ranch area had been logged over and the area further south toward Mormon Mountain and beyond had to be accessed. Trennert (1967-8) states that the "geographical structure of the region" prevented the line from being extended further south. This seems surprising to me as I've seen some grades in some surprisingly rugged country and the area south of Coulter Ranch doesn't seem to be too bad.

It was decided to continue the line beginning where it forked off at the Forest Road 132 and Lake Mary Road intersection. The line was to go over Walnut Canyon and continue down the east side of Lower Lake Mary and meet the abandoned Arizona Mineral Belt line at what is now the northern end of Upper Lake Mary. A bridge was constructed over Walnut Canyon in 1917. The concrete abutments are still in place and are visible from Lake Mary Road just south of the Forest Road 132 intersection.

Aerial view of Walnut Canyon bridge abutments.

A piece of rail was used to strengthen the northernmost abutment.

The next two photos show the grade south of the Walnut Canyon bridge. The grade is above Lake Mary Road. It pretty quickly ends at the highway and is several feet above the highway due to the road cut created when the highway was constructed.

Short sections of the grade are fairly obvious along the west side of Lake Mary Road along Lower Lake Mary.

Roughly half way down the western side of Upper Lake Mary, a Flagstaff Lumber Company line forks off from the older Arizona Mineral Belt (AMB) line. It only followed the AMB grade through Clark Valley (now Lower and Upper Lake Mary). A more direct route from Flagstaff closely followed Lake Mary Road all the way to Lower Lake Mary.