I remember stuff like that from growing up in rural Vermont . Some things NEVER change. 
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Excellent synopsis of these always multi-level players situation on in your first paragraph HenryB.
D. Rockefeller the self-rightituos religious moralist WAS the became a bigatosis capitalist. Henry Ford the former farmer/inventor wanting to hard labor “free” the farmers became the intrusive social-progressive machine-factory labor salver.
Just like the “Electric Wars” of Edison&supporters versus G.Westinghouse/N. Telsa bad behavior does not correspond at all to the Tech-best solutions.
Your last two lines at The end are contrary, confusing and inaccurate though.
In-the-Rural, before IC engined automobiles and trucks (horse-less) there were the horses, woodfired stationary steam, coal fired rail steam.
In the cities before the automobile their was also Lots, and lots of transportation horses, horse shit, horse stables, knackers and all assorted, too. With electric rail. With coal fired rail. Real noisy. Real stinky.
Coal fueled steam DID allow for more wide spread rail. Yep. More rail sprouted, dependent towns. And especially the rise of mega-Cities with multiples of plus-one-million people clustered.
I do not see this as thriving at all.
Some of the best of the Arts and Culture in history were developed and made in cities of 500,000 and less. Does not need a million people clusters to have diversity and quality.
Big mondo multi-million shitties just become from the Rural: bigger, hungrier, more insistent/demanding sucking resources drains and magnets.
Stalin-isms: before Stalin made his famous explanatory, justification statement for Quantity-as-a-fix-all.
S.U.
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I am happy to be living in a Township.
That is kind of what I was think of .
rural free delivery "sears and roebucks catalog " .
List of ghost towns in the United States
Project of the Kansas State Historical Society to identify and document extinct and little-known communities, incorporating prior research as early as 1904.
Addition information about extinct towns is no longer being added to these volumes. Instead, this information is being preserved as the Extinct Cities history collection in the Kansas State Historical Society’s manuscripts holdings.
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O.K. I do now see.
I too live on the edge of a small once-rail-dependent township. Town of Yacolt Washington. Once . . . nearly hey-day (early 1900’s) of 2500-3000. Crashed after the pull-out of Weyerheauser Co in the 1920’s. Low point of only ~275 in the early 1950’s. Now with year around all-weather paved roads access re-built back up to a long-distance commuter/retirement bedroom town of ~600 households, ~1700 folks.
Oh. That light-duty railroad still here was a pre-Weyerheauser, 1901-03 over-promoted, private investor-sucker-big-fail. Never, ever were they going to make it over the Cascade Mountains to the east this way. Bankrupt far before automobile influences.
Penny’s on the dollar invested then devalued was what kept it up, running, and gasping alive, until the regional major damaging snow/runoff floods of winter of 1996/7. Even volunteer restored sections are a white knuckle 15 mph lumpity, shake, rattle and can’ardly-roll tourist ride.
S.U.
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you can run rail on wood . at some time you need to get off train and get wood. it should pay your ticket .
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Ha,ha, my sweety Dana remembers the train ride. She grew up by La Center. Her dad built a log cabin 7 miles out of town up by View Wa. Across from the small airplane landing stip. The cabin was all heated by a wood stove. They sold it in 1990 and retired early and traveled the states, lived in Mexico.
I looked at that cabin, two stories high. Frank built it by himself while the family of 4 lived in a small trailer on the 2 1/2 acre lot.
We will be over there on June 9 of this next year for her class reunion. Lord Willing.
She probably drove by your place in her VW bug with her best friend Karen, when she was a teenager in the 80’s. They knew all the back roads in the area.
Bob
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From the bycx site HenryB put up click open “history”.
Other Internet Yacolt area history sites, and links can be found. You will find contradictory dates, events-sequnces, and people cited.
This RR dedicated one has the dates and folks cited correctly. Just not all-area inclusive outside of the RR interests.
Bob Mac; every PNW area in this same time periods have fascinating stories to dig into at the local museums. Wife and I do this much traveling around. Folks back then, digging in, establishing. Making-Do for the long runs. Visting these other places rural Oregon and Washington we always end up saying, “We could live here, too just fine.”
S.U.
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I grow Hutterite soup bean . I am not a Hutterite
We Hutterites are now living in a golden age. Never before in our history has there been such a long period where the authorities have left us alone to live and worship as we wish. The communities we live in are safe, secure and prosperous.
Around us, the world is changing at an incredibly rapid pace. The Christian worldview that has shaped societies for over two thousand years is under fire and in some places, almost obsolete. Self is worshipped in place of God and truth is considered relative. The world is at our gates, trying to win the hearts and minds of our young people. It is a time to be on our guard,
Each colony may consist of about 10 to 20 families (may not always apply), with a population of around 60 to 250. When the colony’s population grows near the upper limit and its leadership determines that branching off is economically and spiritually necessary, they locate, purchase land for, and build a “daughter” colony.
The process by which a colony splits to create a new daughter colony varies across the branches of colonies. In Lehrerleut, this process is quite structured, while in Darius and Schmiedeleut the process can be somewhat less structured. In a Lehrerleut colony, the land will be purchased and buildings actually constructed before anyone in the colony knows who will be relocating to the daughter colony location. The final decision as to who leaves and who stays will not be made until everything is ready at the new location.
During the construction process, the colony leadership splits the colony up as evenly as possible, creating two separate groups of families. The two groups are made as close as possible to equal in size, taking into account the practical limits of family unit sizes in each group. Additionally, the leadership must split the business operations as evenly as possible. This means deciding which colony might take on, for example, either hog farming or dairy. Colony members are given a chance to voice concerns about which group a family is assigned to, but at some point, a final decision is made. This process can be very difficult and stressful for a colony, as many political and family dynamics become topics of discussion, and not everyone will be happy about the process or its results.[citation needed]
Once all decisions have been made, the two groups might be identified as “Group A” and “Group B”.[41] The last evening before a new group of people is to leave the “mother” colony for the “daughter” colony, two pieces of paper, labeled “Group A” and “Group B”, are placed into a hat. The minister will pray, asking for God’s choice of the paper drawn from the hat, and will draw one piece of paper. The name drawn will indicate which group is leaving for the daughter colony. Within hours, the daughter colony begins the process of settling a brand new site.[citation needed]
This very structured procedure differs dramatically from the one that might be used at some Darius and Schmiedeleut colonies, where the split can sometimes be staggered over time, with only small groups of people moving to the new location at a time.
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Gen1 biocrude from wood, that is actually true as you are essentially making wood vinegar and then separating out the various fractions.
Gen2 biofuels are drop in replacements and 99.9% identical to traditional fuels. They essentially crack everything down to CO, then use Fischer-Tropch reactions to synthesize the long chained alkanes used for fuels. There is variance in the components of traditional FFs depending on what source of oil is used. However, they had locked the regulations in so tight for jetfuels/military grade fuels, you oould only use FFs feedstocks because of the 0.1% variance.
There are a couple of other companies doing it as well, Red Rock biofuels is building a plant for 15M gal/yr of jetfuel, in oregon, however, the airline industry uses like 1.5 Billion/yr. It is a drop in the bucket, but it is something. If they can refine the process and make it cost competitive, then waste forestry products end up with a new market, which gives them value again.
There are a number of other companies that operate in the jetfuel space as well, some convert soybean oil to jetfuel, and others convert ethanol to jetfuel. Ethanol also happens to be a viable replacement in manufacturing for ethylene. However, it don’t believe it is cost competitive at this point. (It is continuous improvement which is a decades long process of minor improvements.)
Since I was talking about waste wood uses, CoolTerra is a biochar product, that they pH balanced, have all sorts of field testing done with it. If you have a large plot then it might be worth it to take a look to see at least what their performance improvements were for various crops. It is a lot of work to make enough biochar to cover an acre, however, the improvement might be worth it.
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I have been interested in biochar for some time. There are all sorts of claims, but not as much concrete evidence. The terra preita areas in amazonas are fairly compelling, at least for tropical soils, notoriously weak / nutrient poor (much like far north soils, can grow great trees, but mess with the leaf litter and microbiome, and they struggle to grow hay). I buy the claims of soil porosity leading to greater biodiversity in the soil. Potentially those organisms could provide greater nutrient availability. Enhanced moisture retention seems credible. Cattle eating char emit significantly less methane, perhaps making feed conversion more efficient. We could benefit from all these things.
But what is certain is that the charcoal is atmospheric carbon taken out of circulation for a very long time. Now and then I will find bits of charcoal in the soil on my land, amazingly intact, could be from a forest fire a thousand years ago.
Don’t forget to carbonize bones too, high source of phosphate, that will enrich any biochar. It seems most bone material now ends up in landfills, to prevent mad cow disease, etc. Abbatoirs might be happy if someone wanted bones…
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Too Small to be worth operating by me . Too big to be allowed to connect to power company . Five years before I was allowed to connect at half capacity . Without having to pay $1000 application and additional inspection fees . Community based power would have fees of $200,000. This is a good time to ask to make some change .
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Organic matter helps a lot to improve soil quality. I kind of look at biochar as added organic material from wood, which otherwise could take years to break down into usable soil. If I get the grinder working well I will be adding it.
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Yep. Yep. Local fellow here with a 30kW (50 peaking) electrical generating windmill did go the multiple $100,000’s jump through hoops to grid-tie attempt.
Still now years later Court ordered lock rotor. Not-turning. Not generating. Not contributing.
The birders got him from local complainers up through the national Audubon Society for his personal project “Eagle killer machine”.
Wanna buy a nice 20 meter three bladed wind turbine with tower cheap? You can pre-view this on Net-maps viewers. Clark County WA. Northern edge. ~7 miles east of the city of Woodland WA.
45.907474 - 122.639618
S.U.
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There was a proposal for wind power on windy hill. I am not sure there was ever any money for it . Nearly everone had a sign out against it . Some made their own signs . Some added stactuary . The County Board passed an ordance banning a windmill withen three miles of anyones home , the signs were kept up for another year .
County Board members approved today a special-use permit so a Missouri company can build a $160 to $180 million power plant. Power Ventures LLC’s plans a 450-megawatt, natural-gas-fired “peaker” power plant . Peaker power plants are known to prevent blackouts and brownouts.
A proposed 200-acre solar farm — the largest solar power development that’s been pitched so far — advanced out of the Zoning Board of Appeals Monday with a whopping 42 conditions. Included was one where nearby homeowners selling their properties could challenge their appraisals and demand monetary compensation from solar developer Hendricks Solar LLC if the appraisals weren’t to their liking.
“The question is, ‘Will they still proceed with these conditions?’” said County Board member Cathy Ward, who attended the meeting as an observer.
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Peaker plants are typically a lot smaller then 450mw. There is over saturation in the market for NG power plants in most parts of the US. That part of the midwest may have an issue as there is also a considerable amount of coal use, and quite a bit of wind power.
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The CPV Three Rivers Energy Center is a nearly $1 billion privately funded project designed to meet the future electricity demands . The 1,100-megawatt natural gas-powered 2-by-1 combined cycle facility will provide enough electricity to power about 1.1 million homes.
Competitive Power Ventures Holdings, LLC CPV Three Rivers Energy Center 1250 Mw Planned
So this became that ? They are building both this and that ? You pay for this and they give you that .
I had that album Neil Young "Hawks and Doves "
They might be building peakers as well. The NG is probably replacing coal or nuclear fired generation. The peakers additions are fairly normal, It is -really- hard to integrate renewables onto the grid with coal or nuclear because the plants aren’t designed to handle variable demand. NG has an easier time with variable demand. Maryland’s grid is like 60+% coal and nuclear, which makes it harder to integrate.
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Here’s an apparently successful “macro” approach…