Morton Depot

Morton's depot marks the end of the line on the Tacoma Eastern Railroad's main freight route, completed into this Lewis County timber town in 1910 — several years after the railroad's passenger line had been spiked home at Ashford, gateway to Mount Rainier, in 1904. The Tacoma Eastern was built largely by Japanese immigrant labor with construction money quietly supplied by the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, which openly took control in July 1909, folding the route into what became known as the Milwaukee Road. The railroad lived on timber: cars rolled out of the woods carrying "Tacoma Toothpicks," single enormous logs eight feet or more across that could weigh forty tons. Morton grew up around that traffic — settled in 1871, named for Vice President Levi P. Morton, and incorporated in 1913 — and by the 1950s was known as the "tie mill capital of the world," with the longest railroad tie dock anywhere stretching along the tracks east of town. Timber processing remains part of the town's economy, and the depot endures as the landmark of Morton's Milwaukee Road logging-railroad era.