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Leonard Trafton Leonard Trafton moved to Seneca in 1947 and stayed here until 1969. Mr. Trafton used to live on the front street in Seneca. When he went to work for Ellingson Lumber, he moved to one of the houses on the back street that Ellingson had built. He lived there until after he was married. When he got married, he and his wife, Kay, moved into the middle of town on “B” street. The house they moved into had been one of the “cheese boxes,” but they built on to it. - Back when the school gym was going to be built, Leonard Trafton helped pay for the gym along with many of the men that worked in Seneca by donating a day’s wages to pay for the lumber. Mr. Trafton didn’t go to
Since a doctor was so far away, Mr. Trafton said Seneca had a nurse, Carine Williams. “She could fix just about anything,” Mr. Trafton said. Once a week a doctor from Burns, Dr. John Weir, would come up, but mostly they just had Carine Williams. Leonard Trafton had a successful life in Seneca. He first started working at the age of 16. He worked in the gas station for Jim Moore, driving the oil delivery truck. He enjoyed this job because he got to know all of the people and was making money. Mr. Trafton made 87.5 cents an hour, which worked out to $6.40 a day and $120 a month. An interesting side note to his job for Jim Moore at the gas station is that Mr. Trafton’s sister, Lois, married Jim Moore’s son, Dinty. After Mr. Trafton worked at the gas station, he went to work at the mill, which at that time was called the R.L. Smith Co., but was then bought by Ellingson Co. When he was working at the mill, he was a boxcar loader or a gyppo loader. He said that for every 100,000 board feet of lumber that he loaded, he was paid $100. He had to wear leather mitts and a big leather apron while he was loading the boxcars to protect himself from wood slivers. When we asked Mr. Trafton what he wore when it was –54 degrees outside, his reply was, “Everything I had!” He said that he would work for five minutes and then go get warm. He said that everyone who was outside had to wear a handkerchief over their mouths to keep their lungs from freezing. Mr. Trafton said that while he was in Seneca, he did get to meet Mr. Hines. He said Hines would come up once a year and go out in the woods to look over the logging operations. Leonard said he was an ordinary man. The one thing he really remembered about Mr. Hines was that he liked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Mr. Trafton said that there were close to 200 loggers living in Seneca when he was here. He said that the hotel was full of loggers, along with three bunkhouses out behind the hotel and bunkhouses on the logging road, or the 16 Road as it is called now. He said that every day the workers would bring 50 cars of logs to Seneca from the woods. He said that the empty cars would come up from Burns and they would be exchanged with the full ones to take the Hines logs down to the Hines mill below Burns. He said that the logs were very big, probably almost 40 feet long. The 50 cars would stretch for about a half of a mile. When asked about the trains and if he had ever ridden one, he said that he hadn’t ridden on any of the trains, but he had ridden out to the woods on a “speeder,” a little railroad car that had a motor and a cab. He said that in the summer the “gandydancers,” high school kids hired to work on the railroad, would hook a trailer filled with their repair supplies onto these little speeders and go out to fix the rail lines. He said that Alec Bjorkman and a guy he called Lil’ Johnny Ice were the foremen for the gandydancer crews. We also asked him if he had ever gone inside the tunnel down on Poison Creek. He said that he had been by it a lot, but had never been inside. He did say that he used to have a Model A when he was a kid, and he let some of the air out of the tires and drove it on the railroad that way. Mr. Trafton said that there were many mills in Seneca when he lived here. He remembers there being the Hudspeth planer mill, CL Pine, Lamford, and Rickets. Ellingson Lumber Co. hauled lumber in from Izee and milled it here in Seneca. He said that seventeen to twenty boxcars of milled lumber went out of Seneca every day on the railroad. This was besides the 50 cars of logs that Hines was shipping to Burns every day. Mr. Trafton’s father-in-law was an engineer for the railroad. One of the funniest stories Mr. Trafton remembers about living in Seneca involves the town marshal, Benner, who would stand by the service station and tell the same story every hunting season. The marshal was out hunting and he shot a big buck. The buck fell down, and then he thought he saw the buck stand up so he shot it again. It stood up once again, and again he shot it. When he walked over there, there were three bucks lying on the ground. Another one of the stories Mr. Trafton remembers about Seneca also involved hunting. Every hunting season, 10,000 hunters would come to Seneca to hunt. One day a hunter came to the store asking how to get to Camp Creek. After getting directions, the hunter went up the bumpy, muddy road with his trailer. Once he got there, he couldn’t turn around! Mr. Trafton played baseball in his free time. He and Wade Officer worked together to start a little league in Seneca. Boo Williams managed the ball club and Leonard handled the fundraising. They built the softball field that is still the site of many little league and softball games today. They also built a hamburger stand. The team had a game every Sunday with a big barbecue after the game. In the winter everyone would ice skate on the pond that was out back of the school. Mr. Trafton said the fire department would fill an area back there with water to freeze and form the ice skating rink. Mr. Trafton said that they celebrated the holidays, like Fourth of July and Christmas, as people do now. On the Fourth of July they had picnics or went boating. During Christmas they visited neighbors and had parties. Seneca appreciates Leonard Trafton’s hard work ethic and willingness to do extra. His service to Seneca will never be forgotten.
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