As wheat production in southeastern Washington increased during the last decades of the nineteenth century, farmers living on both sides of the Snake River faced a daunting problem: how to get wheat from the top of the canyon above the river down to the river below. In some places it was a 2,000-foot drop. The few roads into the canyon were steep and long, and hauling grain along these roads was a dangerous and time-consuming proposition. Railroads were only making limited inroads into the area at the time, and for many farmers living near the canyon, it was more efficient to ship their grain by steamboat on the Snake River.
From Chutes to Buckets to the Tram
Several methods were devised in the 1880s and 1890s to get the grain more quickly and easily down into the canyon and to the river. Grain chutes were first used. Charles Truax built the first one in Garfield County in 1879. But a problem soon became apparent: Grain was often ruined by friction created by the speed of the descent from the top to the bottom of the canyon.
Bucket tramways were next used. These were more successful. The bucket trams consisted of a long circular cable with steel baskets or buckets connected at intervals, bearing something of a resemblance to today's ski lifts.
Then there was the rail tram. The first Mayview Tramway was built in 1890 directly across the Snake River from the community of Wawawai (Whitman County). But this tram followed a canyon and it was impossible to build a straight track. After several rail cars derailed on a curve, in 1891 the tram was moved a quarter of a mile upriver.
Getting Grain to the River
The first tramway rails were constructed of two-inch by six-inch boards. But these wore out quickly and were replaced by iron rails in 1892. The tram rails ran 4,800 feet from the brake house on a bluff at the top of the canyon to two warehouses at the bottom of the canyon, dropping 1,800 feet along the way.
Farmers brought their grain into a large storage yard near the top of the tram, where it was weighed and placed on small push cars on one of six feeder rail tracks, which ran to two other rail tracks that were connected to the tram's brake house. Once the push car reached one of the two connecting tracks, the grain was transferred to a rail car on the connecting track and sent to the brake house. At the brake house, the sacks of grain were unloaded from the rail car and tossed into a chute down which they slid to a man who loaded them onto a tram car.
The tram cars themselves were 10 to 12 feet long and looked similar to flatcars used on railroads today. Each car could carry 45 sacks of grain, and each sack of grain typically weighed 140 pounds. On an average day, the tram carried 2,700 sacks of grain.
There was one set of rail tracks on the tram, with the exception of the halfway point. Here two sets of tracks were laid side by side to allow an up car and down car to pass. As the cars that were simultaneously going up and down the tram on the single set of tracks neared the two tracks, they tripped an automatic switch which allowed them to swerve onto one of the two tracks and pass each other. The rail tracks were supported by trestles and timbers anchored to the ground, and the grade of the tracks varied, from 60 percent in some sections to less than 10 percent in others.
Except for when the cars were being loaded and unloaded, there were two cars on the tracks at all times -- a down car loaded with grain and an empty up car. Each car was connected to a circular 5/8-inch-thick cable that ran the length of the rails. As the loaded down car left the brake house, it would pull the empty car at the bottom of the canyon up to the brake house at the top. A one-way trip lasted three minutes.
Initially the tram used a single-wheel braking system, but it failed during the first year of operation, killing two workers who were by chance riding in one of the cars. After that, a large wooden brake drum, consisting of two wheels, was built and the tram's cable wrapped around the drum several times for better control. A metal lever connected to a flexible band around the drum was also used to control the tram's brake.
When the loaded car reached the bottom it was disconnected from the cable and an empty car was put in its place for the journey back to the top. Once disconnected, the loaded car was pushed onto a turntable and moved to one of two large warehouses along the river. The turntable and warehouse tracks were level with the rafters of the warehouses. When the car was pushed to the warehouse rafters a workman brought a chute up to the side of the car and two men slid the sacks of grain down the car to be stacked in the warehouse until it was picked up by a steamboat.
When an empty car was ready to return to the top, a man at the bottom ran a flag up a pole, signaling the brakeman at the top to release the brake to send the next car down. This method was only used in the early years; by 1900 a single-line telephone system had replaced the signal flag.
In the early 1900s the Mayview Tramway hauled an average of 14 million pounds of grain a year, much of it during a roughly one-month period in the summer when the wheat harvest season was at is peak. It was owned by several different parties in its 52-year history.
Steamboats stopped picking up grain from the Mayview warehouses in 1938. For the next four years a ferry hauled grain across the river to be picked up by the railroad at Crum Siding (Whitman County).
The tramway closed in 1942.
