Steam and Sail is a painting by James Williamson which was uploaded on October 1st, 2011.
Steam and Sail
Steam and Sail, American Railroad History, Bellingham and Fairhaven Railroad History
Bellingham and Fairhaven, Washington State, Untied... more
Original - Sold
Price
$2,100
Dimensions
Not Specified x 16.000 x 24.000 inches
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Title
Steam and Sail
Artist
James Williamson
Medium
Painting - Pen, Ink Watercolor And Gouache
Description
Steam and Sail, American Railroad History, Bellingham and Fairhaven Railroad History
Bellingham and Fairhaven, Washington State, Untied States
Artwork by artist James Williamson.
Artist James Williamson, ASMA
Signature Member of the American Society of Marine Artists
The painting Steam & Sail was created after I researched a variety of maps, drawings and local newspaper articles about the history of rail around Bellingham Bay. Drawings from the period show a network of wooden train trestles from the south end of the bay at Fairhaven, along the shore continuing to Bellingham and to the north side of the bay. These drawings also show steamboats on the bay and locomotives on the wooden trestles with large quantities of dark smoke pouring from their smokestacks. Apparently during those days smoke was a good thing. It suggested industrial growth and a promise of jobs. Behind the locomotive tall ships fill Bellingham Bay. The integration of rail and sail was a formidable industrial combination.
America was being revolutionized by the Iron Horse. This revolution in transportation was to become the mainstay of the American economy and to become a railroad center was a sure sign of prosperity for newly founded towns such as Fairhaven and Bellingham. It was the optimism of becoming a railroad terminus that kept towns on the bay alive.
Fairhaven and Bellingham proclaimed to the nation that they could and should be the most suitable location for the west coast terminus of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railroads.
The Terminal Building, so called because of Fairhaven's aspirations to become the Terminal City of The Great Northern Railroad, is the oldest surviving commercial structure in Fairhaven. The 50-foot square, two story, wood frame building was erected in the later months of 1888. The following year the south and west sides of the building were covered with bricks that came from the Orient as ballast in the sailing ships which called regularly at the foot of Harris Street.
Hoping for a Railroad: During the 1870s - 1880s it seemed clear that in order to really prosper the Bellingham Bay area needed a railroad. Local boosters hoped to make one of the Bay towns the terminus of a transcontinental railway line. In 1864 Congress chartered the Northern Pacific Railroad from Lake Superior to Puget Sound. The Northern Pacific dashed those hopes when, in 1873, it chose Tacoma to be its terminus. Then, in the late 1880s 1890s, the Bellingham Bay Improvement Company and the developer Nelson Bennett promoted real estate speculation around the bay in anticipation of the selection of Fairhaven to be the western headquarters of the transcontinental Great Northern Railway. Developers put up buildings in downtown Fairhaven so quickly that they forgot to leave space for alleys behind them. But the railroad went to Seattle instead. In the end it was smaller companies like the Bellingham Bay & British Columbia and the Fairhaven & Southern that connected communities on Bellingham Bay to Canada, Seattle, and the logging camps and tiny towns in the hinterlands.
Bellingham Bay and British Columbia Railroad was a railroad that was built in northwestern part of Washington State, between the town of Whatcom, now Bellingham, Washington, then to the town of Sumas, Washington to connect with the Canadian Pacific Railway for a continental connection.
The company was incorporated in California on June 21, 1883.[1] After the Northern Pacific Railroad chose Tacoma over Whatcom on Bellingham Bay, local railroad boosters along with P.B. Cornwall at their head started the B.B. and B.C. Railroad in 1883.
The company was capitalized for $10,000,000, with its aim to build a line from Bellingham (then known as Whatcom) to Burrard Inlet now located in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada, a distance of about 56 miles. The company owned a town site and about 4000 additional acres in the Bellingham area.
Construction began in 1884 with a lot of activity, then soon slowed. After reaching Whatcom Creek it headed towards Sumas Washington, to a connection, also being slowly built in Canada. It was during this time that, as the story is told, "every time a boat or ship entered the bay, the engine would be fired up and ran up and down the short track with lots of whistling and blowing off steam to impress the visitors".
By 1889 the line was still slowly pushing forward towards the Canadian border, while another road, the Fairhaven and Southern Railroad was pushing south from Fairhaven towards Skagit County and planned a connection with the north bound Northern Pacific Railroad. But construction soon continued and the road was graded further north with materials en route by ship, and reached the Canadian border in 1891 and several weeks later the Canadian Pacific Railway reached the border.
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October 1st, 2011
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