Longview #28: Monticello Medical Center

600 Broadway

Monticello Medical Center on December 17, 2005.

At the east end of Broadway, opposite the Monticello Hotel, R. A. Long built the second building in Longview: the Longview, Portland & Northern Railway Station. Long knew that the city of Longview would need rail service to move lumber from his new Long-Bell mill, and to serve any other industries that came to his city. The existing major railroads served Kelso, but building into Longview would require a bridge across the Cowlitz River, an expensive proposition for them. Thus, the Long-Bell Lumber Company formed the Longview, Portland & Northern Railway Company in 1922 to build from a connection with the Northern Pacific Railway at Longview Junction across the Cowlitz River into Longview, and north to Ryderwood, along what is now the West Side Highway. Long-Bell held 100% of the stock in the railroad company. Construction began in 1923 and operations began in July 1924, temporarily using the Northern Pacific mainline to Olequa (located between Castle Rock and Vader) to reach Ryderwood. The first Longview depot was a converted boxcar at 15th and Hemlock.

The first train arrived in Longview over the LP&N’s own line on April 4, 1925, and was greeted by a crowd of 15,000 at a temporary depot here at the foot of Broadway. Long wanted his city to have an impressive passenger station to welcome businessmen who visited his city by train, and had planned to built such a depot here as early as 1923. Because the passenger station wouldn't make any money for the Long-Bell company itself, Long-Bell President M.B. Nelson was opposed to spending company money on the project, so Long paid for the depot himself as a gift to the city at a cost of $125,000 and leased it to the railroad. Completed in 1925, it was built of brick and white terra cotta and featured an 80-foot clock tower, a columned entry and a second floor balcony. A plaque placed at the station at its completion read as follows.

LONGVIEW, PORTLAND & NORTHERN RAILWAY COMPANY
PASSENGER STATION
ERECTED                                                                                            A. D. 1925
______________

R. A. LONG                 CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
M. B. NELSON                                         PRESIDENT

J. D. TENNANT, 1ST VICE PRES.                       R. S. DAVIS, 2ND VICE PRES.
S. M. MORRIS, 3RD VICE PRES.                         R. T. DEMSEY, SEC'Y-TREAS.
R. W. SMITH, COMPTROLLER        WESLEY VANDERCOOK, CHIEF ENGR.

A. N. TORBITT                              ARCHITECT
______________

THIS TABLET PRESENTED BY THE EMPLOYEES OF THE COMPANY
TO COMMEMORATE THE COMPLETION OF THE RAILROAD
AND THE OPENING OF THE STATION                 DECEMBER 31, 1925

Dedication Plaque from the Longview Railway Station displayed at the Cowlitz County Historical Museum in Kelso, May 1, 2012.

Long slowly convinced the major railroads like Northern Pacific and Union Pacific to operate trains to his new station. The first through passenger train from Portland to Seattle stopped in Longview on July 14, 1928, and that year four trains a day stopped at the station. In 1931, the Milwaukee Road began serving the Longview station as well. It wouldn't last though. In 1932, Long-Bell sold the line between Vader and Longview to the Northern Pacific, Great Northern and Union Pacific for $4 million, with the LP&N operating the line under contract, and on December 12, 1933, a flood washed out the bridge across the Cowlitz River at Longview Junction and the tracks to the north at Castle Rock. The passenger trains all returned to the Kelso depot and all rail freight traffic into Longview used the Weyerhaeuser bridge until the LP&N bridge reopened on June 10, 1935. By then, the major railroads had given up on serving Longview directly, and the passenger station closed. The line to the north was never rebuilt, and logs from Ryderwood were transported to Longview via the Northern Pacific mainline. The Longview, Portland & Northern would continue on as a freight-only line, connecting the Long-Bell mill and other Longview industries to the major railroads at Longview Junction.

Postcard View of Railway Station as Cowlitz General Hospital.

In July 1935, the Longview General Hospital leased the LP&N passenger depot and opened it as the 35-bed Cowlitz General Hospital and moving out of the Willard Building. A 40-bed wing was added in 1941 at a cost of $60,000, bring the total to 75 beds, only 5 less than Longview Memorial Hospital. The clock tower was torn down in 1963 as an earthquake precaution. On August 6, 1966, Cowlitz General Hospital broke ground on a new $2.6 million building on the north corner of its property, paid for in part by a $987,000 grant from the health department, which had declared the old depot unfit for use as a hospital. In April 1968, Cowlitz General Hospital completed and dedicated the new building and moved out of the old depot. Attempts were made to offer the depot first to other medical tenants, then to the Cowlitz County Historical Society in August 1969, and finally to the Cowlitz Cableview cable television company in December 1969, but no deal could be reached and demolition of the depot began on December 22, 1969. Today there is almost no sign the depot was ever there.

Site of the Longview Railway Station, December 17, 2005.

Cowlitz General Hospital was later renamed Monticello Medical Center. Eventually, the Monticello Medical Center came full circle, being acquired by St. John Medical Center in 1987 for $5.5 million. It was renamed the Broadway Campus of St. John Medical Center, becoming a part of the hospital it originally split off from in the 1930s. It is now a part of PeaceHealth.

Historical Photo:
Old railroad station as Cowlitz General Hospital (Cowlitz County GenWeb Project)

Related Links:
Monticello Medical Center at the Cowlitz County Parcel Search

As for the Longview, Portland & Northern Railway, the last train from Ryderwood ran on February 28, 1953, and the route to Ryderwood was abandoned, leaving just the Longview operation. When Long-Bell was absorbed by International Paper, I-P used the name for all of its railroads in the northwest, each a different division. The Longview section was called the Terminal Division. Other divisions included the 8.76 mile Northern Division between Willamina and Grande Ronde, Oregon (1955-1980), the 3.5 mile Southern Division at Gardiner, Oregon (1952-1999) and the 29.5 mile Chelatchie Division from Chelatchie to Rye, Washington (1960-1981). On January 11, 1971, the LP&N ended its Longview operations, and the Longview Switching Company, jointly owned by the Burlington Northern, Union Pacific, and Milwaukee Road, was formed to take its place serving the 52 shippers on the line in Longview. Today, Longview Switching is jointly owned by the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroads. Longview Switching has its own employees, but uses equipment from its parent railroads. It serves Longview Fibre, the Port of Longview and other industries along Industrial Way. The rail yard on the south side of today's State Route 432 between Longview and the Harry Morgan Bridge is Longview Switching's (formerly LP&N's) Longview Junction Yard. There are currently no operating divisions of International Paper's Longview, Portland & Northern Railway, though the company may still exist on paper, with no equipment, track or employees, in case I-P ever needs it again.

Continue to 29: Y.M.C.A.…