Howdy folks. My previous article, The Railroad in Spring Valley, Part 4 – The Early Years told how my grandfather Cassius Pence and the railroad “brought” the Pence family to Spring Valley around 1900.

In this follow-on article, I would like to share some of his son Rex’s recollections as he grew up with the railroad in his front yard during the time that his father, Cassius, was still the depot agent.

Doug Blegen’s second book, Spring Valley, The Early Days, pieces together a fascinating story of the origins and evolution of the branch line that, in its heyday stretched from Woodville through Spring Valley and Elmwood to Weston. The eventual destination for the branch was Durand, but that section was never completed. That does, however, explain the Weston terminus, which otherwise made little economic sense.

The railroad had reached Spring Valley by the time Rex was born in April of 1905, but just barely. Its expansion was a central feature in the community’s growth in those days. And it certainly was a central feature for Rex as a little boy whose father was the Depot Agent, and who had a ringside “cliffside” view of the depot and all the trains that came through. He recalls the busy schedule in those days:

The schedule

“The branch line connected with the main line at Woodville. The train used to come up from Weston, where it had tied up for the night. There was a roundhouse there. It would come up about 7:00 AM and go on to Woodville, where it connected with the mainline, then turn around come back down to Spring Valley about 10:00.

“Then it would go back out again. At one time it went on to Elmwood at 10:00 and came back up around 1:00 in the afternoon, then back down to Spring Valley at 5:00 PM. Then it went back out at 6:00 PM, back to Woodville, then back down through the valley at 8:00 in the evening and on through Elmwood to Weston to tie up. We had a lot of train service here at one time.

“At one time the branch line even went on up to Emerald. That’s the town north of Woodville. Emerald was on the SOO line. The branch line went on up there where it connected with the SOO Line. At one time it went from Weston clear up to Emerald.”

He also related that someone (he named the fellow, but I can’t find the story anywhere on my tapes and I don’t recall the name) who lived in Spring Valley would catch the last train to Weston, where he would baby-sit it and service it in the “roundhouse” so that it would be ready to go the next morning. It required babysitting especially in the winter time, when it was important to keep the boiler stoked.

Rex, during his first decade or so, saw the rail traffic increase dramatically. As the roads improved and competition from the trucking industry and the private automobile grew, however, the train era began to fade.

I can recall in the forties and very early fifties when I was growing up that the train still came to Spring Valley every day. I remember the thrill when the mournful howl of the whistle as it crossed the intersection out at Madson’s Mill echoed down the Mines Creek valley, as if some monster was on its way to visit us. It would only be minutes before the thundering and chuffing beast would round the corner by Blegen’s house and arrive at the depot, belching black coal smoke and steam. I can still smell the black coal smoke and hear the clanging iron bell.

Then the schedule was cut back to Monday, Wednesday and Friday visits, but it was still a steam engine that rounded the Blegen bend. In the last years of railroad service to Spring Valley, the “puffer bellies” were replaced by diesel engines. That took the romance out of it, and by the time I returned from military service, the railroad in Spring Valley was no more. That busy schedule that my father recalls was nothing but a memory from him and his generation.

Shopping in St. Paul

In the early part of the century, there were no shopping centers. Automobile travel was pretty scarce as well. Rex recalls that folks back then nevertheless had their own “shopping center” in downtown St. Paul, and the transportation to get to it. Here is his recollection of going with his mother, Orfie, to shop at the nearest “shopping center” in those days:

“When dad was working for the railroad as the depot agent in Spring Valley, of course all railroad employees had passes. We could get on the train any time we wanted to go to the cities, or anywhere on the line, free of charge.

“Mother used to take me to the cities shopping. We would get up at 6:00 o’clock and get ready and go down the steps from our house to the depot to catch the train. I was pretty small, and I would come home at night so dog tired I could hardly get one foot in front of another.

“We would leave at 7:00 o’clock in the morning and go to Woodville where we would change trains. We would arrive at the Union Depot in St. Paul around 9:00 o’clock. It was really a busy place in those days.

“Mother liked to shop at the Emporium, the Golden Rule and Dayton’s department stores, which were the “anchor” stores, and the many other shops in downtown St. Paul. We used to have to get back to the Union Depot at around four o’clock or so in the afternoon. I can remember lots of times we had to run up the depot steps and down to the concourse because mother would use the last minute of her time to shop. Anyway, we always made it.

“I can still remember them calling out the trains’ arrivals and departures. There were always crowds, people coming and going. And I remember the clouds of black coal smoke of the locomotives, the bells clanging, and the steam hissing.

“When we got back to the Spring Valley depot late that evening, I still had the steps to climb to our house on the hill. I always made it, but sometimes dad would be there and carry me up to the house. All in all, it was a very full day.”

And that was how my grandmother took my dad along with her while she “shopped ‘til she dropped” when my father was growing up in the age of the railroad in Spring Valley.

Ice for the refrigeration cars

The ice house by the old “black bridge” on the north end of town, where they used to store ice in sawdust for the summer months, was a subject in and earlier article. It seems that the ice industry in Spring Valley produced an “export” product for Spring Valley. Rex recalls that the operation supplied ice to the railroad.

“The old ice pond, where the river was dammed up, was where they cut ice. Morris Mulheron was the name of the guy. That was the only name I can remember at that time. Mike Zimmer ended up with it.

“Anyway, in the winter time they would cut ice and haul it to the railroad there at Spring Valley and load boxcars with it. It was shipped to the cities, and I think the railroad used a lot of it for their refrigerator cars. They used to get rid of a lot of ice that way.”

I can recall the ice house and ice being delivered to our ice box in the summer in the late forties. And I remember seeing the men out on the ice cutting the blocks in the winter. The industry was a shadow of its former self, and was on its way out because of the newfangled refrigerator, but I was privileged to see the close of an era that figured fairly prominently in Rex’s youth.

Logs and Rocks

There was an amazing flow of commerce on the railroad in and out of Spring Valley. A good feel for just how much may be had by reading Doug Belgen’s second book, Spring Valley, The Early Days, Chapter 3 – Railroad!! Doug’s historical account speaks of a time of great energy and expansion. My dad, Rex, was born into that era as it was reaching its zenith. He corroborates from personal experience some of what Doug writes about:

“Spring Valley was a pretty busy place at one time. The railroad used to keep a switch engine here all the time for switching cars and helping trains up the hill out of the valley.

“There used to be a lot of logs hauled out of here by the railroad. And there used to be a rock quarry down almost to Elmwood. It was a big quarry, clear up almost on the rim of the East hill, and it had chutes down the side of the hill. The railroad had a sidetrack that went up in there by the chutes, and they used to haul a lot of rock out of here.”

You can still see the quarry on the left side way up there on the bluff just before you get to Elmwood. As kids bicycling down to Elmwood we could see the concrete supports for the chutes from the road.

We did climb up there one time. The Quarry was kind of like a “lost world”, largely flat and grassy with small trees growing up here and there. It was a real surprise to us. We expected to see a littered rocky landscape, but it struck us as almost park-like.

The Railroad and the Ford Agency

This article focuses on Rex’s railroad recollections up to the time that his father Cassius left the railroad in 1913. The next article will deal with Cassius’s purchase of the Ford Agency from Nels Madson and the interaction of that business with the railroad in the decades of the teens, twenties and into the thirties.

That article will also be the transition article in my set of tales between the railroad in Spring Valley and the garages of Spring Valley. It will be the first article in an as yet undetermined number of articles in the garage series that will cover the period from 1913 through the fifties and into the sixties.

The Spring Valley Kid

Russell Pence

pence@asu.edu