Watery Grave For Old Engine Navy Divers Locate Locomotive On Lake Bed

A legendary logging-train engine, rumored to have been on the bottom of Lake Stevens for decades, has been found by Navy divers using sophisticated sonar.

The elite team of U.S. Navy divers and demolition experts found the steam locomotive during a training exercise Saturday under 35 feet of water and 14 feet of silt and mud.

They couldn’t see it, but its outline showed plainly on sonar and they could feel it with probes.

“We estimated it about 25 to 30 feet long, lying on its side,” said Navy SEAL and Chief Warrant Officer Dan Nohrden, a Lake Stevens resident.

Gayle Whitsell, Lake Stevens Historical Society president, was sitting on a dock videotaping the process when Navy divers told him they’d found the engine.

“It’s the greatest thing that’s happened in Lake Stevens in the last 60 years. It came out great on sonar,” he said.

There has been a lot of argument about the locomotive over the years, Whitsell said. Some old-timers said they’d never heard of it, “and some said, ‘I remember when I dove down and touched the bell.”’

Nohrden was in charge of 23 people who participated in training for the Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 17, based at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.

The team located the engine 40 minutes into the training mission.

Nohrden said the unit, which finds and disarms terrorist bombs, is required to train regularly in places such as Puget Sound, Alaska, Hawaii and Japan. The Lake Stevens experiment was costeffective because it was close to home, he said.”The plan was we didn’t want to disturb the community,” Nohrden said. “This was a normal operation. We thought if we found anything unusual, we would notify them.”

Locomotives were used to bring logs into Lake Stevens at Rucker Mill, which operated from about 1902 to 1927, Whitsell said.

This engine probably took the plunge sometime between 1911 and 1915, he said.

“The cove was just one big log pond,” he said. “It was the only easy way to transport logs. They didn’t have all these modern steam shovels.”

Anne Whitsell, historical society vice president, said she also is thrilled with the discovery.

“People were adamant about it being there,” she said. “They are feeling pretty good now.”