Wilson Creek, Washington — Railroad Needed a Shift Change

Wilson Creek became important because the Great Northern Railway made it a division point in the 1890s.

Locomotives were serviced, crews changed and railroad workers settled with their families. Hotels, stores, schools and houses followed the payroll.

Wheat farming supplied another economic base, with grain moving through the same transportation network.

The weakness of a division-point town is that the railroad can reorganize the division.

As locomotives and operating practices changed, fewer workers were needed. Rail employment declined and the population contracted.

Wilson Creek remained an incorporated town surrounded by productive farm country.

The tracks survived.

The workforce they once required did not.