Category Archives: Forest History & Archives

OREGON — Iron pipe, concrete foundations and an abandoned railroad grade off a dirt road deep in an Eastern Oregon forest mark a once-bustling mill community that operated in the early 20th century. Established in 1910 by the Baker White Pine Mill Lumber Company, the site was occupied for less than a decade. Now only traces of the industrial landscape remain as testament to the extractive timber industry that once dominated the region. …The artifacts recovered challenge mainstream notions of flannel-clad lumberjacks doing manly things in the woods into a more nuanced story, recognizing the important contributions families made in the male-dominated lumber industry. …The short occupation and remote location made it an excellent candidate for inquiry. …During the Baker White Pine Mill era, there was a shift from an all-male workforce living communally under the company’s care towards a company town model where workers’ families were invited to join them. This kept families together.

Meant as a grand showcase for the Weyerhaeuser Lumber Company, the building in our “Then” photo provided an administrative headquarters in 1923 while offering a structural ode to timber itself. Weyerhaeuser’s timber-trade dominance at the time was legendary, rooted in the 1900 “neighborly deal” in which Frederick Weyerhaeuser purchased 900,000 acres of Washington timberland from railroader James J. Hill for $5.4 million. After the purchase, Everett quickly became the manufacturing heart of Weyerhaeuser’s empire, with waterfront mills producing wood products shipped globally. To manage this reach, the company commissioned a headquarters that doubled as architectural persuasion. Designed by the firm Bebb and Gould, its stylized English Gothic structure was built not only to impress but also to move — literally. Architect Carl F. Gould anticipated future evolutions on the waterfront and engineered the building onto four giant crossbeams, making portability a feature, not a bug. The structure was relocated at least three times.

“Survival in a Mill Town” examines the early union struggles and difficult lives of early settlers who followed the first trains to the Pacific Northwest for work in lumber mills. It was an era at the turn of the 20th Century that helped shape the Pacific Northwest and made timber barons overnight fortunes with the stripping of rich virgin forests. The new book by Washington state native and former Oregon journalist Von Braschler chronicles the events that led to one bloody Sunday in 1916 known as the Everett Massacre. It is a work of historical fiction that centers on his hometown of Everett. …George Weyerhaeuser built several of his first mills in Everett with the million acres of trees he acquired from empire builder James Hill, his St. Paul neighbor who connected the forest of the Pacific Northwest with his railroad. Together they built the towns of the Pacific Northwest with smokestacks lined up between hastily leveled tree stumps.

CALIFORNIA — There’s a new museum proposed for Nevada County, this time focusing on the timber, logging, and forestry industries that have put the area on the map aside from the more well-known Gold Rush. A group—including Nevada County Historical Society, forester Robert Ingram, Economic Development Director Kimberly Parker, Tim Robinson, Landon Haack of Cal Fire, and author Cindi Anderson—have been meeting up for over a year now to ensure the history of timber in Nevada County will not be forgotten. …Anderson said the purpose of the museum is to preserve the culture and pay homage to the many forest men and women, as well as educate and preserve the past and encourage the future for our forests and to be involved in the future of the industry. …Stroh added: “This is going to be probably the biggest timber museum in the western United States.

©Oregon Historical Society

Just an hour from Portland, the concrete ruins of a timber empire sit quietly at the edge of Vernonia Lake, all that remains of one of Oregon’s most ambitious sawmill operations. Built in 1924 by the Oregon-American Lumber Company, the mill once spanned more than 100 acres and was considered state-of-the-art for its time. According to a company history, “The Oregon-American Lumber Company: Ain’t No More,” the mill generated its own electricity. …Vernonia was a remote farming outpost of about 150 people when timber magnate David Eccles and his sons established the company in 1917. After building a rail line into the Nehalem Valley in 1922, the company began constructing what it would call “The Most Perfect Mill in the World.” …The original company was reorganized during the Depression as the Oregon-American Lumber Corporation, then acquired by Long-Bell Lumber Company in 1953 and again by International Lumber Company in 1956. The final log reached the mill on Aug. 27, 1957.

Lowell Thomas “Toby” Murray III (b. 1953) served as the president and CEO of the Murray Pacific Corporation from 2001 to 2017. Murray Pacific is a family-owned timber business founded by Lowell Murray, Sr. (1885-1971). In this June 2025 interview with HistoryLink’s Elisa Law, Murray recounts the 104-year history of the Murray Pacific’s business, from its establishment as the West Fork Timber Company in 1911 to its sale to Sierra Pacific Industries in 2015. Murray reflects on the successes and unique challenges faced by each generation. He discusses his grandfather’s pioneering efforts with selective logging in the 1920s and 1930s and how his father, Lowell Murray, Jr., engaged in a protracted battle with the St. Regis Paper Company in the 1970s to reclaim the family’s tree farm. He also talks about his experiences managing the family business, including restoring the family’s tree farm after years of mismanagement, and his experiences navigating a new era of environmental regulations.

Despite cyclical economic conditions, our state’s wood products story remains a separate and dramatic story through local history. The beginning of this great activity may have begun in 1788 when English Captain John Meares took a shipload of Puget Sound spars to China. He never made delivery. A fierce storm caused him to jettison his load mid-Pacific. Four years later another English Captain named George Vancouver replaced a broken spar with a Puget Sound tree. Wood was used in the construction of fur-trading posts, of course, which led to the processing of logs for a variety of domestic and commercial use. In 1825, a Vancouver, Washington millwright named William Cannon first whipsawed logs into boards. The Hudson’s Bay Company, with headquarters then at Fort Vancouver, accepted shakes and shaved shingles from American settlers in exchange for general supplies. The first “permanent” mill on Puget Sound was built by Michael T. Simmons at Tumwater, Washington.

The former home of one of the world’s most famous western novelists, Zane Grey, was a Mediterranean Revival house designed with high, wood-beamed ceilings and airy balconies. “It had almost a cathedral vibe when you walked in,” said Nathaniel Grouille on a recent visit to the site.  Grouille is now facing a big question: How to rebuild the site in a way that preserves Grey’s legacy while protecting it from the inevitable future fires and other disasters resulting from the impacts of human-caused climate change? Returning the property to what it was in Zane Grey’s day isn’t on the agenda. “This structure was incredibly unique, using really high quality old-growth wood and products that just don’t exist today,” Grouille said… Conservation experts are familiar with this tension. “How can we ensure that we can adapt the historic materials without losing the power these places have?” said Seri Worden, senior director with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The North Cascades ecosystem includes diverse forests shaped by natural processes and human history. Indigenous peoples have used these forests for millennia, employing cultural fire and benefiting from harvesting various resources to live a rich life. Europeans and Americans arrived in the mid-nineteenth century and saw the forests in economic terms. The subsequent rise of the timber economy, facilitated by railroads, transformed North Cascades forests. But the exploitation of labor and the land forced reform as workers and conservationists organized to lessen abusive practices. Federal land management sought to protect forests, develop them for recreation, and help the timber industry. By the 1950s, these competing demands clashed. This struggle culminated in efforts to preserve the North Cascades as a national park in 1968. This and subsequent developments reflect evolving values that view forests as more than standing timber. …When lumbering started in the North Cascades, the prime value of forests was economic. By late in the twentieth century, other values had ascended, including protecting biodiversity. 

Did you know that in 1884 that John Foy’s mill between Foys Lakes was considered the first water-powered sawmill in the valley? Or that in 1914, the first of 147 permanent fire lookouts on the Flathead National Forest was built on Spotted Bear Mountain? Folks can learn about the history of the timber industry in Northwest Montana in all new displays at the Northwest Montana History Museum in Kalispell in the exhibit, “Lumberjacks, Tie Hacks and River Pigs.” The museum has long had a display on timber in the Flathead Valley, but it was in need of an update, so the museum, along with a host of volunteers, revamped the displays and the layout. For example, the timeline display is made from cross laminated timber panels donated by SmartLam in Columbia Falls.