 'Steam Donkey' Dedicated
This article appeared in The Issaquah
Press, August 18th, 1999
The second steam donkey to be restored by the Issaquah Historical Society as a
symbol of the town's early timber industry was dedicated Aug. 10 next to the
Issaquah Trail Center at Southeast Bush Street and Rainier Boulevard South.
Members of the historical society, retired timber workers and their
descendents, Mayor Ava Frisinger and a former mayor Rowan Hinds were on hand at
"Preservation Park" as a plaque was installed in memory of Ted Cook
Jr., a man who fully realized the need to preserve this part of Issaquah's
history, according to the society.
Among the many volunteers on the project, it was Cook who facilitated the
loan of equipment by several companies. According to local historic
preservationist Greg Spranger, Cook was persistent in convincing the city to
designate the specific portion of land for the display.
Donkey engines were once used all around Issaquah. They were called donkey
engines because they did the work of animals, mostly donkeys and oxen, hauling
felled logs. Poo Poo Point got its name from the sound a whistle would make when
a "hook tender" signaled he had two logs tied to a cable and was ready
to have them towed by a donkey engine. The engine would haul them from up to a
mile away, to a limbed tree in the center of a clearing called a "spar
pole," to be loaded on trucks or rail cars.
The engine was found in the summer of 1987 by Spranger and then-councilman
Rowan Hinds on Weyerhaeuser land in Tacoma's Green River watershed southeast of
Enumclaw, on a mountain at the 2600-foot elevation. It took four years' worth of
trips to disassemble and haul out the engine, with help from Valley Excavators
of Issaquah putting a road in and hauling the parts out from Marenkos Rock
Center in Preston.
The engine was built somewhere between 1895 and 1910 by Puget Sound Iron and
Steel Works in Tacoma, said Spranger. A handful of volunteers have spent the
past six years working on weekends when time was available, getting the
cylinders clean, getting rail skids, having a crane set it up, reassembling the
parts, getting the replica tin-roof house built for the engine and finishing the
exhibit.
This Article
© 1999 Issaquah Press.
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