This cache is located on Arizona Historical Society Pioneer Museum property and is accessible at all times. The container is a .30-caliber ammo can that accommodates travel bugs. The hide is located at ground level, on the locomotive known as Southwest Lumber Mills Engine No. 12, a 1929 Baldwin locomotive that was moved to the museum property during the early 1990s. Cache container is easily accessible from the ground and does not require climbing on the locomotive. This is a family-friendly experience. Please respect Flagstaff's history and STAY OFF THE LOCOMOTIVE.
Philadelphia’s Baldwin Locomotive Works manufactured No. 12 in 1929 for the Hammond Lumber Company’s operations in Mill City, Oregon. Engineers designed this locomotive as a “tanker” with two 1,000-gallon saddle water tanks on the boiler and a fuel oil tank located behind the enclosed cab. The wheel configuration is 2-6-6-2, meaning one pair of unpowered leading wheels, followed by two sets of three pairs of powered driving wheels and one pair of trailing wheels. After over 20 years of work in Oregon, company officials sold the locomotive to the Arcata & Mad River Lumber Company in northern California. A few short years later, managers with Flagstaff’s Southwest Forest Industries purchased No. 12 for service in northern Arizona. The company rebuilt the engine and removed both saddle tanks, the fuel tank, and the rear wall of the cab. Workers extended the cab and added a tender to supply enough water for the 64-mile roundtrip from the Flagstaff mill forest logging operations.
No. 12 hauled its last load of logs in 1959 when Southwest Forest Industries discontinued railroad logging by pulling up miles of track in the area. Company managers displayed the retired locomotive at the Coconino County Fairgrounds south of Flagstaff.
In 1994 the Northern Arizona Pioneers’ Historical Society (NAPHS) spent $30,000 to move No. 12 and its companion caboose from the fairgrounds to where it is today. Volunteers labored two days loading the 100-ton engine onto flatbed semi-trucks for the nine-mile move to a prepared site at Pioneer Museum.
No. 12 represents one of the last two logging locomotives used in the Flagstaff area. The second engine, a 2-8-0 built in 1917, is on display between Route 66 and the railroad tracks in downtown Flagstaff. These two steam locomotives are present day reminders of over 100 years of logging Flagstaff’s forests, from 1882-1993. During the heyday of timber operations, rails reached like spider webs from mills into the forest in many directions.