Sisters Roundhouse still stands

This roundhouse is a relic of Sisters' logging days. photo by John Hayes The historic Sisters roundhouse still stands across from the western end of Trinity Way as a reminder of earlier logging days.

Built in 1947, the structure served for about a decade for the storing and repairing of railroad equipment for Brooks-Scanlon logging operations in the area.

Those operations reached as far as Fly Creek, east of Green Ridge in Jefferson County, through Sisters and connecting with the mill in Bend.

Fred Gibson was construction superintendent at the time for Brooks-Scanlon and he and his crew built the roundhouse. The building had two tracks, which could service two engines. Bill Quigley and Hugh Birchfield worked at the repair facility according to reports of editor Paul Hosmer in the Brooks-Scanlon "Pine Echoes," the company's employee newsletter (1947).

During the same period, portable cabins were moved into Sisters in an area that became known as The Pines. It was typical for logging operations to move the mobile cabins to new areas where logging was taking place.

"This was the first time that the moveable housing had been placed adjacent to an established town," said historian John Hayes. "The frame buildings were delivered to Sisters by railroad flatcars."

Thirty-seven of these units housed logging families until closing in 1956. The Sisters camp was the sixth and last Brooks-Scanlon camp. Hauling timber from the forested areas was taken over by trucks through an agreement with Harold Barclay of Sisters.

Interested folks may see one of these early cabin units in Camp Sherman where it is used as the Chapel in the Pines. Three of these cabins plus the roundhouse remain today in Sisters on the property now owned by Hayden Homes. Their future is unknown.