A Railroad Across Moran Prairie: The Spokane & Inland Empire Railroad

At the time we bought our mid-1980s era house last year I didn’t know anything about the history of the neighborhood, nor had I even heard of Moran Prairie. I was aware that the Spokane & Inland Empire (S&IE) Railroad had once passed through this area, but I didn’t know that the Mullan Road had been built through here as well over fifty years earlier. For a brief overview of the history of Moran Prairie see this article on HistoryLink.org. For this post I’m going to focus specifically on the railroad that once ran across the prairie.

Ben Burr Road runs along the former railroad right-of-way south from Moran Prairie toward the Palouse. Today the road ends just before where the first large bridge once stood.

The predecessor to the S&IE was a streetcar company that built lines in Spokane in the early 1890s. After being reorganized in 1903 and updating old streetcar routes to standard gauge, an interurban route was extended from Spokane to downtown Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Based on their success operating an electric interurban, the S&IE decided to push south into the Palouse with an electric line, and selected a route southeast from Spokane across Moran Prairie. The steep grade to get from downtown Spokane up to the prairie was challenging for steam powered trains but was easily handled by electric motors.

Grading through Moran Prairie was done in late 1905 which required some cuts and fills. South of Moran Prairie the railroad required significant trestle and bridge work to access the Palouse, which would eventually lead to the demise of this route. Track was laid in early 1906, and the first S&IE train ran on June 30, 1906 as far as Valleyford, about 17 miles from Spokane. About 40 miles south of Spokane, the S&IE split into two lines, one headed to Colfax which opened to service in August, 1907, and the other to Moscow, Idaho, which opened about a year later in September, 1908. There were plans to join the two branches by forming a loop through Pullman, and building a line from Moscow further south to Lewiston, Idaho, but there was never enough profit incentive to do that. No line extensions occurred after 1908.

Diagram showing the completed railroad and proposed extensions, none of which were built. This isn’t a true map and doesn’t show all the stations along the line but Moran does show up.

I like this hand drawn map, even if the scale and dimensions are a bit off, because it shows Elberton!

This detail from a map published in 1923 is in poor condition but it does show all of the designated stations along the line.

The S&IE was purchased by James J. Hill in 1909 as a feeder line for the Great Northern (GN) Railway. The S&IE continued to operate independently until merging into the GN in 1929. By the late 1940s the timber trestles and bridges south of Moran Prairie needed to be renewed, but due to the prohibitive cost, the GN signed a trackage right agreement with the Union Pacific for access to Spokane along their route slight further east. The day the agreement went into effect in 1952 the GN abandoned the first 23 miles of the track south from Spokane ending 46 years of train service to Moran Prairie.

The Ben Burr Pathway sits atop the old railroad bed, shown here going through a shallow cut.

South of Spokane, much of the railroad’s former right-of-way is still visible throughout the Palouse and it can easily be traced on Google Maps. There are plenty of cuts, fills and some remnants of structures along the route, like the ones I pointed out in my blog post about the city of Palouse. In Spokane, it’s a bit more difficult to see the former route due to development over the years as segments of the line moved into private ownership. But fortunately some segments remain public right-of-way, albeit with incursions in some places by private property owners. Two of the public segments are accessible, paved trails today, and two others are city streets.

The name Ben Burr pops up along the former route multiple times. After retiring in 1953 as chief civil engineer for the Spokane Division of the Great Northern, Ben Burr worked to get the S&IE right-of-way into public hands. And in honor for his work we now have (from north to south) Ben Burr Trail, Ben Burr Boulevard, Ben Burr Pathway and Ben Burr Road formed from segments of the former S&IE. The latter two are on Moran Prairie.

Most of Moran Prairie has been developed into housing subdivisions. But remnants of the agricultural past still exist like this 30-acre tract along the Ben Burr Pathway. This barn was built in 1908, just a couple years after the S&IE built through the prairie.

Where Ben Burr Pathway and Ben Burr Road meet today at South 57th Street was once the S&IE’s Moran Station at milepost 7.68 from Spokane, which included a small frame shelter shed (just six by eight feet) where passengers could wait for a train. There was also a 1,100 foot siding here and a short 550 foot spur for the Spokane Fruit Growers Company. In 2019 the Spokane Transit Authority opened the Moran Station Park & Ride at the same location—I think the new passenger shelter is likely within 100 feet of where the S&IE's shelter shed once stood. So today you can once again see people waiting for a ride into town, on a bus now, almost 116 years after the first interurban arrived at Moran Station.

The two-bay bus stop at the Moran Station Park & Ride. I suppose this small shelter isn’t any more or less glamorous than Moran Station’s wood frame shelter shed would have been. Note the barn in the background.

A post script: By coincidence, the same day I took the photos above of the barn on Moran Prairie it was announced that this 30 acre plot of land had been purchased by the YMCA for the development of a facility, so that barn will be coming down after more than a century of service. I guess that means I need to go take some more photos before it is gone. A silver lining, I suppose, is that the YMCA plans to develop only half of the 30 acres (the far side of the photo), while the other half along the Ben Burr Pathway will be held as a land conservation easement with public access trails connecting with the pathway.

And a second post script: I saw reference to a Ben Burr Park but I couldn't find it on Google Maps so I wasn't sure where it was, or whether perhaps the reference was just to the Ben Burr Trail which connects two city parks. But then I checked the City of Spokane Parks & Recreation database and found that Ben Burr Park does exist and has been around since 1999. It's not along the former right-of-way but very close, about four blocks to the east and just south of 44th Street. I've submitted a request to Google Maps to get it added so if you're ever looking for it in the future you can find it!

 

Sources for more information:

Clive Carter, Inland Empire Electric Line: Spokane to Coeur d’Alene and the Palouse, 2009

Stephen B. Emerson, “Spokane Neighborhoods: Moran and Glenrose Prairies — Thumbnail History,” HistoryLink.org essay 9036, posted Sept. 5, 2009

Tracy L. Rebstock, “Ben Burr Trail,” Spokane Historical, accessed February 3, 2022

Nicholas Deshais, “Getting There: The Curious Case of Ben Burr,” The Spokesman-Review, Jan. 8, 2019

Mitch Ryals, “Ride Ben Burr,” Inlander, Sept. 22, 2016