Last week my friend Miki and I spent the week hiking in the Blue mountains of eastern Oregon following an old line there. The line, dismantled in 1995-96 was built in 1907 to provide power to the gold mines in the town of Borne . When the line was dismanteld in 1995, many beautiful classic multipart Lima insulators were destroyed- a real historical travisty!!!! The Forest Service orderd the line crews to remove and distroy everything related to the line except the bare wood poles that were left to decompose on the line route. Up untill 1995 nearly everything on the line itself and even the origional butt stubbed wood poles dated from 1907. Today the line is bare of nearly all evidence except the wood poles, The line primairly used the M-3285 Made by the Lima Insulator Co (1904-08). Myself, being a big Fred Locke fan, am always intrested to learn and discover things related to him and lines assocated with his insulators . The Lima Insulator Co was owned by the locke family.. Very little in the way of insulators are still on the line to find today on this line but we thought we'd try anyhow. So we picked the most rugged inacesable places to look where the 1990's line demolition crews might have hidden stuff and got luckey .... The above photo shows the line route headihg south west off into the distance down from a 7200 foot pass through a totaly roadless airea. we got here by hiking cross country along a ridge for about two miles through dense woods and some snow ... It was late spring this day and the snow is still in the woods in places. One day it actualy snowed on us there thoe it was June! The next 8 photos are from this hike and hunt. I gave some important finds to the Freemont powerhouse museium at the start of this line . The line used the M-3285 and rare M-3048 produced by the Lima Insulator co in 1907. [id=122436735] and the rare U-968 thomas glazeweld in a few remote locations. The following finds were made on sections of the line that passed through areas of private land where the crews were not so pressed by the USFS to clean everything up .