Alstown Discovered!

 

The main building in Alstown...not sure if it's a homestead house or if it was more like a boarding house.  

 

 

We believe this is the garage (in the foreground) and stable (in the background).

All the remaining buildings in town have a flagstone foundation, like this one.  This is the homestead/boarding house.

This whole building was made of flagstone, but we are not sure what it was.  It was right next to the homestead/boarding house and sure looked like it would house animals for some sort, but it was much too small for horses or cattle...so grain storage maybe?

Here's a nice view of the stable, and it's pretty clear that it was a stable.  It has a flagstone foundation and clearly has stalls and is about the size of a barn.

We believe this is a garage, because near to it is a small out-building that has 50-gallon drums of oil! 

The stable and the garage!  Next to the garage is a water pump, and next to that is the out-building with the drums of oil.  We guess they stored farming equipment such as tractors.

Just down the road from this portion of town, is the grainery.  It looks like a old silo with a building next to it, and at the time we didn't realize it was actually part of the town too.

In doing a little research on Alstown, we discovered that Alstown was a station on what was once a branch line of the Great Northern Railway on Douglas Creek, East of the Columbia River in South Central Douglas County. We saw the creek in Alstown and followed along side it all the way to the backroads entrace to Douglas, WA. 

Alstown was part of the Mansfield Branch, which was constructed in 1909 in 9 months.  The train made scheduled stops at Palisades, Alstown, Douglas, Supplee, Withrow, Touhey and Mansfield to drop off and pick up loaded 40 ft boxcars of grain from The Waterville Union Grain Company.  (We think the grainery we saw near Alstown was part of that company).  Once the grain was picked up, it was taken to Wenatchee where it connected to the rest of the country. 

The town is named for Albert (Al) Luther Rogers, a civil engineer, merchant (Rogers & Howe Store), and civic leader of nearby Waterville. From 1909 to 1913 he served as a regent for the University of Washington. 

Here's the Rogers & Howe Mercantile store built in Waterville, WA 1902-1903.

There's no record of when Alstown was abandoned, but we did discover that postal service for Alstown was established May 9, 1913, and discontinued June 15, 1934.  We also found that in 1938 and 1948 there were huge floods that destroyed bridges along the Mansfield Branch.  The wooden tressels were rebuilt, but I suspect 1948 was "the beginning of the end" for Alstown.  The last known train to run on the Mansfield Branch was 1985.