Draft talk:Ruth, Washington

Let's try again on a Ruth, Washington article
To all concerned:

Looks as if an article about a Ruth, Washington was tried before and deleted...so, I am aware and not trying to ruffle anyone's toe hair, here! According to the deletion page, a Ruth article was of a location near the Hanford Site, but this populated place is not; it's way over in western Lewis County, Washington. It's a small area, and even early census numbers showed no more than 50 people at its prime, but it has existed for some time (still working on finding the founding year...searching "Ruth" doesn't narrow things down all that greatly), and it still exists as a residential area. As for notability, I quote User:MrX from that page:

...According to our notability guideline, WP:GEOLAND "Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low. Even abandoned places can be notable, because notability encompasses their entire history...

Okay, Ruth isn't Seattle and...granted...no President ever visited, neither did Lou Gehrig, Fats Domino, Susan Lucci, Nina Simone...heck, not even my long-haired dork ex-boyfriend from 8th grade went there...but it's existed for at least 110 years, it still exists, and for a few decades was a crucial cog in the logging industry in western Washington. Hopefully my plea helps, if not, let's at least link a Ruth, Washington search to here, or at the very least (or some Washington article detailing the timber industry?

My thanks, everyone! Shortiefourten (talk) 09:06, 31 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I have several questions about this argument: 1) How does it still exist if there is nothing there? 2)Can you elaborate on the census record claim? I searched the Census from 1880 to 1950 and looked at the census maps for the 1940 census. There is no populated place at the location on the 1940 census, and none of those Census records record anyone living in a place called Ruth or Ruth's Station or Ruth Station. Regardless, the name of the place was Ruth Station, so you may want to consider a name name change for this article. James.folsom (talk) 23:43, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Deletion request from May 20, 2022
Original request here -

Warning, slight wall-of-text a'coming...

Temporarily removing the request for the following reasons -

1. Original author was not contacted thus unable to be aware of the concerns.

As the original author, I would clearly have an interest in making sure that I may come to the defense of whatever work I've done. Not out of WP:OWN, but a sense that in by creating this article in the first place, I felt that the knowledge that Ruth, Washington existed was important.

2. Seven days is not enough time.

Although a long-standing tradition in the many AfD processes, it always seemed arbitrary to me. It is certainly not enough time to delve deeper into finding sources for a location that already struggles to find quick and immediate source material.

3. It existed.

I still overwhelmingly concur what MrX wrote at the Susie, WA AfD page. I accordingly admit I was unaware of the WP:GNIS issue although it seems to border on WP:OR to go out of the way to prove a community does not exist.

My views on this matter can be tracked since my early forays - Wikipedia is a repository of knowledge. While we can not possibly add everything about every thing, we run a great risk of loss to areas and locations from being forgotten due to the undue burden of notability based on whether or not it made national news or a has a chapter dedicated to it some book.

To consider Wiki as a place to learn, but yet deny certain locations that exist/existed an article, is a side-eye duplicity. If it weren't for the deletion page at Susie, Washington, I'd never know that Ginger, Pearl, Audrey, Nancy...et al...existed. And that's a damn shame.

Conclusion of statements

Clearly I don't expect to solve this concern here at our tiny Ruth stub, but Ruth, Washington and many small communities, rail stations, and temporary settlements existed and/or still exist. To deny these small locales that honor to be remembered, we run the risk of too many parts of our history to be forgotten. Wiki can thus not be taken as seriously as it should if we intentionally deny the existence and memories of the small parts of our collective lives.

Proposal

Granted, based on the research I've done, there's probably not going to be much more to add to this article. No major news, local or national, there's no current or proposed changes in the foreseeable future to the community, and despite my driving thru the area several times, I personally have not witnessed anything of note outside a mostly naked man mowing his lawn...this article may remain no more than a stub for some time.

However, while stubs aren't necessarily outlawed here, if via consensus that the article ultimately be deleted (I would abide and understand), I propose two alternatives -

1. Merge the article, as is, under the Lewis_County,_Washington subsection, or...

2. Creating an article, including Ruth station, of an expanded list of former rail stations in Washington state; see the Category:Former_railway_stations_in_Washington_(state)

So, ultimately, it's a Keep for me but I see obvious Merge or new article options. But delete? Nope. Goes against what knowledge is supposed to be about.

Shortiefourten (talk) 18:48, 25 May 2023 (UTC)!


 * To be clear, this is not the same location as the one that was deleted in the Susie AFD, and MrX there was wrong, wrong, wrong. You should have to prove a community does exist and is notable, and the GNIS cannot do that. Ginger, Pearl, etc. were literally just railroad spurs, not communities - there's a hell of a lot of places on this planet, and Wikipedia is not the place for individual articles on short stretchs of tracks at an industrial site, so I find it laughable that it's a shame not to know about that among all the places – and even the history of Hanford – out there.
 * I've reviewed the citations on newspaperarchive.com and none of them indicate this was a community, just a place where timber was loaded onto trains – can you please point to which of this coverage is significant and establishes notability? Everything in Category:Former_railway_stations_in_Washington_(state) was a passenger station, and this isn't the same. Reywas92Talk 18:30, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

July 2023 draft
Inspired by 's user page, I restored this page and placed it in the "Draft:" namespace. While I disagree with the recent decision to delete this page, that's neither here nor there. I found another notable source (this one: ) which describes (on page 165) the Ruth, Washington stop as a special stop for an extended trip offered by the Chehalis–Centralia Railroad Association in 1996. It would seem that Ruth, Washington is/was at least a notable ghost town suitable for documentation by this encyclopedia. -- RobLa (talk) 22:34, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Quote from James Hannum book
This quote may be useful for fleshing out the "Draft:Ruth, Washington" article:

"When it first opened, the line was called the Skookumchuck Railroad. It crossed the Milwaukee Railroad at Western Junction. That point was was slightly west of place where the Milwaukee’s Gregory Mill Spur, leading to the Fir Tree Lumber Company, had just been removed. In 1936, Weyerhaeuser reorganized the Skookumchuck Railroad as the Chehalis Western Railroad. The new entity included the Columbia Construction Quarry, located south of Vail. This quarry’s stone had been mined previously, in 1916, by the Hercules Sandstone Company, which utilized an extension of the defunct Blumauer Logging Company’s railroad to reach the area. The Chehalis Western also gained control of an abandoned segment of Milwaukee Road track between Chehalis Junction (immediately south of Chehalis) and a point 1.5 miles west of Ruth Station, in Lewis County. The latter grade was put back in service and used to harvest timber from a new Weyerhaeuser headquarters called Camp McDonald. A reciprocal agreement allowed Chehalis Western log trains to run on Milwaukee track from Chehalis Junction to Western Junction. Likewise, Milwaukee trains could operate over the former Skookumchuck Railroad, from Western Junction to the Columbia Construction Quarry. Even after 1980, when the Milwaukee Road discontinued rail service in Washington, a relationship between the two companies lingered. Subsequent to that date, the Chehalis Western became the operator of much of the Milwaukee’s former Thurston County right-of-way." Citation: I'm going to leave this paragraph and citation here for someone else to use in the article. -- RobLa (talk) 05:19, 14 July 2023 (UTC)