Ghost Towns Part 1

Welcome to Tono Washington

It was built in 1909 as a coal mining town

And was abandoned in 1928 when coal became less needed as a form of fuel

In the 1960's & 70's a big coal mining company came in and stripped the land

Destroying anything and everything that was left of the town of Tono

Now, this is the site where Tono used to be.

There is a new reservoir, and from aerial shots, you can almost see old home foundations

As we walked around the reservoir, we decided to "document" what we found

Hoping to find something cool that we could date back to Tono

First we found a boat... not quite old enough to be 100 years old

So we kept looking...

In the middle of the woods we found a pile of old rail road ties and fencing.

This was part of the rail road that USED to exist taking coal from Tono to Buccado, WA where the train still ran through town

There were quite a few rusty nails in the pile too

We even found some scary paw prints...

And small skeletal remains nearby...

Makayla helped out and found a really old rusty propane tank

There were a lot of veins of coal still in random places

It looks like Jordan's shadow, but really it's coal that he's chipping away at

See... lots of coal

The coolest thing by far that we found was an old plow!

Not quite sure how old it really is, but I like to think it is VERY old :-)

We didn't take the plow home, but we did snag a really old piece of metal that had some type of measuring system on it from the Oregon Mining Company

And some old rope and clasp

An "older" knife hilt wrapped in duct tape

Old Diet Coke can...

And an even older Pepsi Free can

We had to bring it home because it says

Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. this product contains saccharin which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals

That just made us smile

All in all, it was a really fun, really LONG day.

And we were VERY proud of Makayla for walking SO much!

She really was quite adorable helping us look for things in the woods