Williamson River

The railroad this party went looking for took seventy-one years to arrive. Williamson was hunting a line from the Sacramento Valley to the Columbia. The Southern Pacific reached Klamath Falls from Weed, California, in 1909 and Chiloquin by 1911, then stopped at Kirk, just north, while a federal court case against the company held up construction. When it was settled, work resumed, and on September 1, 1926, the Natron Cutoff over Willamette Pass was finished. Chiloquin incorporated that year. The line still carries freight and Amtrak's Coast Starlight.

What the plaque says

Oregon History Williamson River A Pacific Railroad survey party searching for a practicable route for a railroad to connect the Sacramento Valley with the Columbia River passed near this point bound north on August 20, 1855. Lieutenant R. S. Williamson headed the party with 2nd Lieutenant Henry L. Abbot second in command. Among the officers in the Army escort were Lieutenant Phil S. Sheridan and Lieutenant George Crook. Dr. J. S. Newberry was the Chief Scientist with the survey party.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Collier Memorial State Park and Logging Museum — steps away
  An outdoor museum of a century of logging machinery in the pine woods north of Klamath Falls, given to the state by a lumberman and his banker brother.
• Fort Klamath — 5.8 mi
  The army post that reached the Wood River Valley four years before Klamath Falls existed, and the treaty signed near it that put three peoples on one reservation.
• Upper Klamath Lake — 19 mi
  Oregon's largest lake, wide and shallow, where farms, endangered suckers and, since 2024, returning salmon all need the same water.
• Crater Lake Lodge — 23 mi
  A hotel on the caldera rim that opened in 1915 with tar paper on its walls, was never quite finished, came close to demolition, and is now mostly new behind its old face.