Chippawa Bay Steam Donkey – UPDATE

In a previous post I mentioned a steam donkey that I went to when I was very young, and I always said I would go back, and 33 years later I did just that. I started Vanishing History for a reason and that was to save History so rapidly vanishing, today the timber is ripe for harvest, most 100 plus years old in areas previously logged. To get to where I went you have two ways,  by boat or by quad and if you go by quad you travel through Theodosia Inlet. We went there last year looking for this steam donkey and did not find it, when we went through last year this area of Theodosia was all trees.

After travelling through Theo, we travelled high into the alpine area, once we reached the top we came across some snow still on the road, it was decided instead of following the path, to make his own, he did not get far.

After pulling him back onto the main trail we continued up and over the mountains to Powell Lake and down to Chippawa Bay

Here you find yourself yet again climbing up. The area you go into was logged sometime around 2002, this area was logged in 1912 by the Watcom Logging Company, I know this because when I was there in 1978, I was in the buildings that still stood and read the paperwork that was still there, today I wished I took all that but its gone now. Around 2002 when the new way of logging took over this area, they came in with large machines that could cut, strip and length-cut then stack a tree in under 5 minutes, in 1912 that same tree took 3 days. What was nice was when they logged this area, I can see the view they had back in 1912 as well as today, standing in the same spots of previous people.

As spectacular of a view as this was, this was not the reason I came so far, I was looking for a steam donkey, although I knew where about it was, I was also looking for things I saw back in 1978, and I found some of it, old plank roads

When I walked up to the steam donkey back then, this is some of what I followed, beside this used to be a set of square log tracks, amazing enough some of these plank roads are still there.

Continuing past the old plank roads we ventured even higher now, going to look for this old steam donkey from so long ago, last year we went right by this area and did not see it, this year we looked harder and unless you look right, you could miss it.

So there it was, 33 years later for me, we walked up to it and it was an amazing sight.

Looking at it, we walked around and took a lot of pictures, here are a few of them, words can not described it.

We decided to  opened the door and looked inside and took a few pictures.

There was a lot of smaller parts laying around and larger parts too.

There used to be buildings on each side of the steam donkey, they are long gone now, but there are still some smaller remnants of their existence.

I hope you enjoyed these pictures, feel free to leave comments or add more of your own if your own.

If you want to watch the video of this steam donkey here it is.