EVERETT — Rod Wickham was walking along Colby Avenue on Tuesday when he spotted something that made him grab his camera.
He could see wooden ties from a long-ago railroad track heading west on California Street.
That brief glimpse into Everett’s past thrilled him.
“I was kind of amazed,” said Wickham, who works down the street as a designer. “I picked up an old spike. I’m now using it as a paperweight on my desk.”
Workers uncovered the wooden railroad ties this week while working on a streetscape project.
It’s common for streets workers to dig into bits of Everett’s past, said Everett Public Works director Dave Davis.
“Whenever we do one of these projects, what we unearth is a little bit of a mystery,” Davis said.
Workers find the layers of bricks that used to line streets. They find the remains of wooden sidewalks, plaster-covered wood curbs and even the bases of hitching posts.
City Street Engineer Ryan Sass said workers found tracks a few years ago when they were working on Hewitt Avenue.
As Everett history buffs know, the city had a streetcar system as early as 1893. In 1910, a separate interurban trolly line stretched from Everett to Seattle.
The tracks on California Street don’t belong to either system.
“What they’ve uncovered is a service spur that wasn’t actually part of the city’s streetcar line,” Everett historian David Dilgard said.
Dilgard had to check old streetcar maps to be sure. Those maps show no service on that portion of California. The Interurban didn’t stretch that far either.
He thinks the old tracks were a railroad service spur that would bring heavy goods to and from businesses along Colby Avenue and the waterfront.
Dilgard believes the line also curved around the back of the alley.
One such business that was probably served by that line was Carsten’s, a meat-packing plant located at 2818 and 2820 Colby Avenue. That plant operated from around 1907 to the mid-1930s.
Even after it was gone, there were grocers in the same block that probably used the line, Dilgard said.
Renee’s Contemporary Clothing, an upscale boutique, is now where the meat-packing plant used to be located.
As of Thursday afternoon, the ties were still visible. They may not be much longer.
Typically, wood ties would get scraped away during improvement projects, Sass said.
Even if they don’t, they’ll be encased under pavement again soon.
Debra Smith: 425-339-3197; dsmith@heraldnet.com.
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