The Jasper and Eastern Railroad -Oakdale

Mark had taken a ride along La.10 northwest of Oakdale. He had noticed what appeared to be a rail bed alongside that route. He wrote me and told me about it. I had to investigate.

Sure enough, there had been a railroad that served Oakdale, a very famous one, although it was disguised and operated under an alias for a while.

The site historian fronted that info, "Oakdale was the end of a Santa Fe subsidiary known as the Jasper and Eastern, which was merged into the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe RR. Santa Fe, SP and a host of other RRs had subsidiaries with different names that were headquartered in Texas to satisfy the Texas law that any RR co. doing business in Texas, had to be headquartered in TX".

Not everyone knows that.

Then I found a few websites:

Site 1

Site 2

Site 3

Site 4

Of course, these sites led to other sites and pretty soon I was succumbing to link overload. I'll deal those out as we move along.

The first target of my new lust, was Oakdale. As you read, Oakdale was at the end of the line. That worked well for my need to see it all, a precise starting point. I was familiar with Oakdale enough to feel at home wandering around. The existence of a "Santa Fe Street" helped. The fact that Sante Fe Street has been consumed by the new La.10 bypass, did not. The depot and yard area were now only open lots alongside the busy bypass.

Being that Oakdale was "the end", I'll post the pictures beginning from what I believe was the end, the old bulk plant.



That was looking east from 10th Street, the location of the depot.

Here's zooming in on the fuel depot at the eastern end of the line.







Check out the old gas pumps.



This is the railroad side. The rail level door is the give away.





Here's the map to guide you through the rest of this page. Click to enlarge and then squint. "Bulk Oil Plant" is to the east, Depot is in the middle, "Office", to the left, is important and so is "Rails found Here". The main point of this map is to show you what a rail Disneyland Oakdale was.Oh, sorry, the green line is La.10, sorta, or what was Santa Fe Street. Ignore its bend northward. The more or less vertical railroad is the Union Pacific or what was the Missouri Pacific RR, which runs by Glenmora and Longleaf, further north.



That's it for now.

After receiving overwhelming support for my new format, thanks Al, I've decided to press on with this format, that being transferring the archived write pages to email.

I know when a story is going stale so I'll inject a little zinger here.



That woke you up, didn't it.

I next rode around town with my printed pictures of the old pictures found on Site 1.

The first easy hit in Oakdale was the old school. It is on the east end of town.



Thinking these were the same building, I was quite surprised to find they aren't. The building I shot was built in 1923. The above building was built in 1914. What's the story?



This is the old depot. Unfortunately, I have no new picture of it. The depot was located on the corner of 10th and Santa Fe.



These pictures were taken from that approximate location.
Looking north from the depot.



These are panning shots from that location.







This is looking south. There appeared to be nothing left on the south side. I evidently thought not since I took no picture?



This one is taken from 5th Street which is several blocks north of the depot. I failed to update that shot. Oh well.



The railroad water tank (steam engines needed water) can be seen done at the end on the right.

Enough for now.

One more, this is looking at the Oakdale yard from the 10th Street Crossing, near the depot.



Ok, my morning chores are done and I'll throw a few more lines and pictures up.






Leaving the depot area, I decided to look for what was the mill. I wasn't very optomistic after being disappointed in downtown Oakdale. The existence of a Hardwood Mill Road was a help. The yellow track above is the route I took. A clearer map is above.

I turned onto Hardwood Mill and saw this oldish warehouse. I though, "It's old".



It had "Oakdale Manufacturing Inc" on it. It also had rail door on the side of it. I didn't notice that until now. Then I came to a bump in the road. It was obvious it was a rail crossing at one time. I dismounted and looked around. I didn't see much but was once a dump. Then I crossed the street and went back in the bush. I'm going to have to augment these as what I saw is not as evident in the small pictures. Looking through a chain link fence I took these.








And off it went into what I call the "plant". This I would later locate at the end of the wye on the maps above. On one map where I was is labeled "Bump" and the other is labeled, "Where rails found". Now you not lost, cher?



Oh, I almost forgot, the rails stuck out of the fence.



And, this was taken "a while back" at the end of the wye, where I was, looking into the yard area, what is now behind the chain link fence.



I then went on down Hardwood Mill to River Dam Road expecting to see a river dam. I did see the very high Calcasieu River, noted on the map.





Either the dam was submerged or this is all that is left of it:



Feeling that this was not a hot spot for mill finding, I rode back up Hardwood Mill Road. I saw this old sign off of the road. Things had been different in the past.



I was right at the split where the chemical plant road, what was La.1152 at one time, and Hardwood Mill Rd diverged across from the Oakdale Cemetery.



There was another old building there, right behind the restaurant.



There was also a RR Crossing sign. The railroad was gone.



This map gets bigger if clicked.
It shows how the rails left the "Y" and entered the yard (where I found the rails) and met the Missouri Pacific and then returned up the Mill's railroad, the Hillyer Deutsch Edwards Inc RR. It shared the rails with the Hillyer Edwards Fuller Inc RR of Glenmora.



I stopped and looked down the right of way that led to US 165 and where they had connected.



There was something at the end of that red arrow that I missed when I was there.

I returned to the hump to commune with the railroad. I was sitting there, off the road on but on the hump and up rolls a sheriff's car. He asked, "What's up?". I was looking at my self made guide list and handed what I had to the cop who, much to my disbelief, was not interested. I said I was researching the old mill and railroad that served it. He said I should go to the restaurant since they had a bunch of pictures in there. I did. I talked with a young lady by the name of Edwards. Yes, her great grandfather had been an owner of the railroads. Here are a few pictures from inside.



The restaurant had been the mill's office building. My guess is that this picture is it. My further guess is that large building to the right is the one that was labeled as Oakdale Manufacturing.



The mill was around as late as 1957. There's a 57 Chevey in the parking lot.



It was a big place.



Here are the engines. I really messed up on shooting them. These are the best of the lot.











This may be an early picture of the mill.



This one is where the photographer was standing in the center of the wye and looking toward Oakdale. The water tank is in the distance on the north side of the tracks.



Leaving the restaurant I felt like the long ride had been a success. I went up on the new section of La.10 and looked back on what I think was the wye area. My imagination was stretched.





Oh, well.

Leaving town I saw one more treat.
It was what I think is where the Oakdale and Eastern left town bound for logs and Pine Prairie, I'm guessing.



You know, you may not be interested in all this old railroad stuff, I don't blame you, it gets redundant. As a person who likes riding around, it is a wonderful way to find places like this while being able to enhance the experience with the vision of old trains and the sounds of whistles, bells, and of course, some clickity-clack.