Before Trucks: How Loggers Built 15,000 Miles of Railroad Just for Trees

Before trucks and paved roads ever reached the timber, the only way to move logs out of the deep forest was to bring the railroad to the trees — and so the loggers built railroads on a scale that is hard to believe today.

Across the country, timber companies laid an estimated fifteen thousand miles of track for one purpose alone: hauling logs out of the woods. These were temporary railroads, thrown down over rough ground, across canyons on wooden trestles, and up grades no mainline would touch — then torn up and moved again once the trees were gone. It was a vast, restless network built and rebuilt by hand, mile after mile, wherever the forest still stood.

This is the story of the logging railroads: how thousands of miles of track were built just for trees, how the crews did it, and why almost none of it survives today.

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