Sawmill at Nagrom, Washington, ca 1912 (MOHAI 5279)

Nagrom was a town in

King County King County is located in the U.S. state of Washington. The population was 2,269,675 in the 2020 census, making it the most populous county in Washington, and the 13th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is Seattle, also the st ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, United States.

History

logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars. Logging is the beginning of a supply cha ...

company town A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets and re ...

, Nagrom was located in the Green River watershed between Kanaskat and Lester. The town was built by the Morgan Lumber Company and named after Elmer G. Morgan, the company founder and owner ("Nagrom" is "Morgan" spelled backward). The site was chosen for its access to timber and suitability to build a

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...

and mill pond. In 1910, Morgan petitioned the

Northern Pacific Railway The Northern Pacific Railway was a transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest. It was approved by Congress in 1864 and given nearly of land grants, wh ...

, which operated the rail line out of

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected m ...

and up over Stampede Pass, to build a spur into the small town. The railway balked, but Morgan persisted and eventually the railway relented. The spur into town was built in 1911. A post office was established that same year, along with a telephone and telegraph exchange. Between 1914 and 1918, rivers and streams flooded in the city of Tacoma's watershed, which was located in and around the town of Nagrom, sweeping sewage and contaminated water from the company settlement into the city's water supply. Worries about

typhoid Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by ''Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several d ...

, a common health risk of the era, caused health officials to instruct residents living downstream from company settlements like Lester, Baldi, and Nagrom to boil their drinking water to reduce typhoid-related illnesses. From 1911 to 1924, the Morgan Lumber Company continued to work the area for timber and to run the sawmill at Nagrom. In 1921-22 the population topped out for this town with an estimated 450 residents. In 1924, however, the company went out of business, presumably due to a post-

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

fall in lumber prices. Logging continued, but at a slower pace, as trucks began replacing railroad in the logging industry. The

U.S. Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency inc ...

began managing the forested land in the area in the 1930s with the help of the

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government unemployment, work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a ...

Decline

The city of Tacoma acquired the water rights on the Green River c. 1910. In the first half of the 1950s, the city's utility arm, today's

Tacoma Public Utilities Tacoma Public Utilities is the public utility service for the city of Tacoma, Washington. It was formed in 1893 when the citizens of Tacoma voted to buy the privately owned Tacoma Light & Water Company. It is the largest department in Tacoma City ...

, began buying private land along the banks of the river between their intake at Headworks (just east of Kanaskat), eastwards to the railroad and logging town of Lester. Beginning with the construction of the Howard Hanson Dam, the city limited access between Headworks and Lester, installing gates at various access points to the Green River watershed. In about 1967, the city purchased the entire townsite of Lester from the Northern Pacific Railway. By 1984, most residents had moved out, the rail line was mothballed by the NP's corporate descendant, the

Burlington Northern Railroad The Burlington Northern Railroad was a United States-based railroad company formed from a merger of four major U.S. railroads. Burlington Northern operated between 1970 and 1996. Its historical lineage begins in the earliest days of railroadi ...

, and all the former communities along the rail line had become ghost towns. Today there are no residents in Nagrom.

Geography

The town was located at

References

Ghost towns in King County, Washington Ghost towns in Washington (state) {{kingCountyWA-geo-stub