You're looking at the old Weed Lumber Company (later Long-Bell Lumber Company) logging railroad grade. Abner Weed started the company around 1900, building a large sawmill at Weed, and within a few years he started pushing a logging railroad northeast out of Weed. SP later bought Weed's railroad when they started building their new main line to Klamath Falls, and as part of the deal Weed obtained permission to build logging railroads connecting to the SP main up to I want to say 20 miles out of Weed. The wye you see the station of Leaf, and it was the location of the longest lived of the logging railroads Long-Bell built tributary to the SP main. Weed/Long Bell initially logged its own timber in the area north of Mt. Shasta, then it moved east, first on 70,000+ acres they bought from the McCloud River Lumber Company about 1919 and then on at least one and maybe more similar size timber tracts they purchased from the Red River Lumber Company a few years later. Tennant was the operational base of the logging railroad, and they had several field camps out in the woods. SP delivered the log cars from Leaf to the mill at Weed.

One correction/note, the logging railroad never did connect all the way to Lookout...McCloud River Lumber Company logged the area south of Long Bell's holdings well before Long-Bell came substantially east of Tennant, and at one point Long-Bell did re-use a mile or so of an old McCloud River Lumber grade to access an otherwise isolated part of their holdings, but there never was any direct connection between the two companies. That being said, Long-Bell did cross the GN main line at grade north of Lookout. Long-Bell started running out of timber tributary to the railroad to cut by the middle 1950s, and abandoned the railroad in 1956.

One last note, someone found and rescued from a dump an old promotional film probably from the late 1940s or early 1950s featuring mostly the logging and railroad operations east of Tennant...it is posted to YouTube at the following link:

[www.youtube.com]

Fascinating footage of a lifestyle we will most likely never see again.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV