While the railroad was a significant part of our youth as we grew up in Spring Valley, about all that is left of it today is a snowmobile trail from Woodville to Spring valley. It is the last faint trace of what was once a throbbing artery of commerce and travel that linked the towns of Woodville, Spring Valley, Elmwood and Westby together like beads on a necklace.

My grandfather, Cassius Pence, came to Spring Valley in 1902 as the depot agent for the railroad. He built a house just up the hill from the depot, the first on the valley’s west hill, and that has been the family homestead for over one hundred years.

He was able to come home for lunch by climbing the steps from the depot to the house. The remnants of the concrete steps and metal handrail going down to the valley floor are still there on the property, although the sidewalk and a little bridge to the depot, as well as the depot itself, have been supplanted by a trailer court.

My father, Rex Pence, was born in that house in 1905 and grew up there. He passed away last year at almost 97 years of age, still in that house. He has left me with many stories of his childhood in that house, and later as a partner with his father, brothers and brother-in-law in the Pence Ford Garage in Spring Valley. The depot and the railroad are a centerpiece in many of these stories. The railroad figured prominently in the experiences of both our family and Spring Valley in the first half of the twentieth century.

But those tales, preserved on tape and in need of many hours of organization, are for future articles once I have exhausted my own more recent experiences. The tales I would like to share with you in this series of articles are from my first hand experience as a third generation Pence growing up in that house in Spring Valley with the railroad right in our “front yard”.

Let’s lay the track. Picture this layout if you will. The scene at the bottom of the West hill of the valley was considerably different than it is now. The track from Woodville turned at Madson’s Mill to follow Mines Creek down into the valley past Blegen’s house, curved south along the base of the hill to the depot in front of our house, and then south past the Valley Elevator (on it’s way to Elmwood and Weston in earlier days).

Figure 1 - The Railroad Layout at the Base of the West Hill

You may notice how businesses that depended on large bulk deliveries tended have a presence close to the tracks. Examples shown are the local fuel and oil jobber’s bulk tanks, coal sheds for the lumberyard, and the Valley Grain Elevator. A lot of automobiles, farm equipment and other goods were unloaded on the depot’s platform for delivery in town and the surrounding countryside. The railroad also ran right next to Madson’s Flooring mill on its way into town, and past the iron ore pits of an earlier time. It was indeed a main artery for the local economy.

The train crews let us ride in the caboose as the boxcars were being positioned and the engine was being turned around on the “Y” so that it faced Woodville for the trip back to the main line. In those days they could let us ride in the caboose without concern for OSHA or lawsuits - a different time, to be sure.

While I never rode the train from Spring Valley to Woodville, it was still possible to do so when I was growing up. My dad, Rex, told about earlier times when the train visited Spring Valley and Elmwood several times a day, and went on to Weston where it was housed and tended for the night. That was before my time, but I look forward to sharing his stories of an earlier time in future articles.

The railroad still extended to Elmwood at the time I was born, but the great flood washed it out for the last time and the railroad abandoned it before I was old enough to remember it. As a kid growing up in Spring Valley, I saw the rail bed and the remains of the bridges when I was fishing and hiking, but the rails were gone and the train to Elmwood was but a memory.

For those kids just four or five years my senior, however, that section of railroad was part of growing up. John Kirk remembers those days:

“One time my grandfather Albert "Abe" Kirk took me on a train ride to
Elmwood. We had relatives down there and so one day we boarded the train
at the SV depot and off we went. It was fun going along the Eau Galle
River bottom and sitting in the caboose. It took quite a while to get to
Elmwood and then we visited the relatives and came to SV later in the
day. I think it took pretty much all day to make the trip. I remember
how much the train swayed and I was afraid the thing was going to tip
over and fall off the tracks.”

I can just feel the train clattering and swaying down the tracks, and smell the coal smoke spewing from the engine’s smokestack.

In the next part of this series we will explore the depot “complex” in some detail. We’ll also examine the bulk-to-dealer transfer of fuel and oil, and other details of this living throbbing organism of commerce that was so important to Spring Valley and Elmwood in their youth. Keep an eye out for The Railroad in Spring Valley, Part 2 – Commerce and the Depot coming down the track soon.

The Spring Valley Kid

Russell Pence

pence@asu.edu