In 1922, the US Forest Service offered one of the largest timber sales in the agencys history, encompassing 890 million board feet of mostly Ponderosa pine timber in the mountains north of Burns, Oregon. Among other requirements, the sale terms required the successful bidder to build and operate 80 miles of common carrier railroad through some of the most remote and undeveloped country in the state. The Fred Herrick Lumber Company and its Malheur Railroad initially won the bidding, only to lose it when a crash in the lumber market forced the company into insolvency. The Edward Hines Lumber...