Harrison's Plankboard Trail - Port Renfrew, British Columbia, Canada
Posted by: 
The A-Team
N 48° 33.601 W 124° 21.442
10U E 399848 N 5379436
The remains of this plankboard logging road are just off the side of West Coast Road outside of Port Renfrew, British Columbia, Canada.
Waymark Code: WMKZ7X
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Date Posted: 06/19/2014
Views: 6
Harrison's Plankboard Trail is one of many historic trails in the Port Renfrew area. Back in the 1940s, at a time when most local log-hauling was done by train, Stan Harrison's operation was much smaller and didn't have the same resources as the bigger companies. Not only was rock and gravel too expensive for Stan to use for road-building, it wasn't locally available. Consequently, Stan used plankboard roads for hauling his logs. The plankboard roads were "paved" with wooden planks, a much cheaper and more readily available material. At this location, you can see the remains of one of the plankboard roads that wasn't disassembled when they were done with it. At one time, a trail created by the Port Renfrew Community Association started from this point and followed the old plankboard road for 3 km to the southwest, but it was abandoned many years ago and is now almost completely grown over and impassible. However, the start of it is still open enough to see some of the remaining wooden planks under the forest growth and debris. An old, faded sign that used to mark the start of the trail is now mostly hidden by trees, and the coastal rainforest has done a good job of obscuring the planks, but they're still there if you look closely.