SPRING1980

0Published Quarterly by the

Pacific County Historical SocietyState of Washington

Lumber Exchange BuildingPacific County Museum 1970 - 1980

Volume XVNumber 1

A Quarterly Publication of the Pacific County Historical Society, Inc .A Non-profit Organization

Magazine subscription rate - $6.00 AnnuallyMembership in the Society - $3.00 single, $5.00 couple

Payable annually - membership card issuedAddress: P. O. Box P, South Bend, WA

Historical articles accepted for publication may be edited by the editors to conform to

TABLE OF CONTENTSTITLE PAGEIntroduction to Voices of Washington State - Judith Espinola3Old-Time Logging in Southwestern Washington - Judith Espinola, ed. ..___ 4Theodore Swanson : Recollections of the Late Nineteenth Century -

Judith Espinola, ed----------------------------------------------------------------- 12Early Logging in Western Washington - Robert Ficken. . . . . . . ..__ 16Pacific County Logging Brands - Larry Weathers -- 17Our Cover Photo - the editors 20

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size and other requirements. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarilythose of the historical society . Second class postage paid at South Bend, WA .

Larry Weathers

Ruth Dixon

Carrie Parks-AkizukiEDITORS

Virginia Graves - SubscriptionsHarry Miller and Keith Senior - Willapa Printing, South Bend

PACIFIC COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY1980

OfficersPresident - Ruth HabersetzerFrancesVice-President - Pat Welling_.-__. ..Klipsan BeachTreasurer - Karen JohnsonRaymondSecretary - Larry Weathers _Raymond

Board of DirectorsDistrict

Term ExpiresNorth District - Menlo - Jake Merkel------------------------South District - Naselle - Peggy Busse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... ... ... . . .South District - Long Beach - Max Wilson ___ 1981Central District - Nemah - Harvey Pierson 1981Central District - South Bend - Verna Jacobson-__ 1982North District - Raymond - Virginia Olsen 1982

Voices of Washington StateIntroduction

This edition of the Sou'Wester features written texts and photographs fromtwo programs in the Voices of Washington series . These stories of logging inPacific and Wahkiakum counties are told by long-time residents who rememberSouthwestern Washington early in the century . They describe the growth andimpact of the lumbering industry during periods of their greatest expansions ; andthey tell of the effects of technological advances on workers . Their reminiscencesdemonstrate the extraordinary impact of ordinary men and women of the PacificNorthwest .

The narrative explanations which connect the portions of oral history recol-lections in these programs were written with the assistance of Professor RobertE. Burke of the University of Washington's Department of History . The recol-lections were edited from longer interviews by David Lee Myers of the WashingtonState Archives' Oral/Audio History Program (1974-1977), coordinated by TimothyFrederick. The short essay on logging by Robert Ficken is also a part of the Voicesof Washington Series. Mr. Ficken lives in Seattle and writes for the Forest HistorySociety, Santa Cruz, California .

Voices of Washington State is a copyrighted series of 35 programs on localhistory . It was produced by Metrocenter YMCA and funded in part by theWashington Commission for the Humanities, a state program of the NationalEndowment for the Humanities . For further information concerning the availabilityof the series to individuals and groups call or write : Joyce McCollough, Metro-center YMCA, 909 Fourth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98104, (206) 447-3679 or447-4551 .

- Judith Espinola, Project Director and Producer

Early Log Truck- Photo courtesy of University of Washington Library, Seattle

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Old-Time Loggingin Southwestern Washington

Edited by Judith Espinola

The first commercial lumber enterprise in the Pacific Northwest began in 1827on the Columbia River in Southwestern Washington . It was operated by the Hudson'sBay Company at Fort Vancouver, and its prosperity influenced the development ofother logging mills in the same area and throughout the state . By 1914, 55% of

employed workers in Washington were connected in some way with lumber .

The growth of that business was staggering during those years and innovations

in logging technology were impressive . When lumbermen first began felling the hugetrees of the state's forests, they used crosscut saws . Chain and power saws, whichlater dominated logging, were not yet in use . To fell the giant trees of those times,

the loggers needed to get above the bumpy root bases. So they inserted platforms,called springboards, into the tree trunks .

Standing on a Springboard- Photo from Collection of Pacific County Historical Society

Theodore Swanson, Wahkiakum County : It was all springboards in those days .

And it wasn't enough to put one springboard in . Some of them went too doggone

high - about three boards up, maybe four . Of course, that depends on if it was

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a steep grade down below . Then you'd have to work around, and if there was abunion or something on that tree that you wanted to get above, then you'd getabove the swell by going up two or three springboards . The first springboard youput in was about even with your body, at your shoulders . You notch that in andthen you jump on .

I remember how I'd jump up and get up on the springboard . Then I have myaxe, and I put another notch in for the second springboard to make it fit tight . I getmy second springboard up. If I am alone, I have to reach down for the springboardand then put it into that second notch . Well, then I got two springboards in . Some-times you got to put on three.

The springboards were in use by the early settlers way back in 1870, until theygot the power saws - and then of course the springboards was out .

Felling trees was only the beginning of the logging process. They were nextcut into manageable lengths by the bucker, a lumberjack who used a bucking saw .

BackersPhoto by Darius Kinsey, Courtesy of Dave Bohn

Usually, they were moved by teams of animals - horses or oxen - over skidroador downhill path in the woods. The skids were timbers laid on the ground likerailroad ties . Grease or water was thrown over them to encourage the rapidmovement of logs on their way to a body of water . From there, they were floatedto lumber mills . Theodore Swanson, born in 1882, continues his narrative on old-timelogging by describing the oxen teams and skidroads used by his father :

D

Theodore Swanson : My dad, when he logged for my uncle, used oxen andhauled the logs about a quarter of a mile down to Grays River to the turn of theWirkkala Road . It's high, and they built the logging road there - that is, a skidroad .

The skidroad was made up of hemlock logs about eight feet long and about16 inches in diameter, and spaced about eight foot apart .

Dad didn't have the money so he could buy tallow to make skid grease . Sohe got me along. I had to pack water and throw on the skids, where the log wasgoing to come . See, when you got a little water on there it greased it up a little bit .

Oxen Team- Photo courtesy of University of Washington Library, Seattle

It seemed like a teamster could get the oxen to run when there was danger thelog was coming faster than the oxen . He hollered at `em, or did something, and theoxen all in one bunch would run fast enough so that the log didn't run on to `em .I can remember that part of it .

Max Wilson, Pacific County : I just missed the oxen team loggers by a very fewyears. When I was a kid, I can remember traveling up and down the old oxen teamroads, and they hadn't even grown brush in `em yet, it was that new . You knowit doesn't take very many years for a road to grow up in this country, if it isn't used .But there was some of those oxen team roads that were still open . The first steamdonkeys, other than the Dolbeer, were the Tacomas, the Seattles, the Willamettes,and the Humboldts . There were four different mixed donkeys in the woods .

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- Photo courtesy of Oral HistoryCollection, Washington State Archives

Steam Donkeys

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- Photo by Darius KinseyCourtesy of Dave Bohn

The donkey to which Max Wilson refers, was not an animal, but rather a steamengine which replaced oxen teams . It was invented by John Dolbeer in 1881, andintroduced in Pacific County in 1893 . This steam donkey pulled logs from one place

to another, and thus revolutionized the process of getting timber out of the woods.One man, the whistle punk, gave signals . Another took care of the engine. A chokesetter attached lines to the logs and another logger guided the lines with a stick .Henry Mooers began his career in logging as a whistle punk:

Henry Mooers, Wahkiakum County : I started working in the woods in the summer

of 1910. I was thirteen years old . They called it whistle punken, giving signals

with the wire over my shoulder to the whistle at the donkey to either go ahead,

or stop. They got directions from the number of whistles that I sent in . I worked

at that for about four years in the summertime . Then I decided that I wanted to

work on the rigging and get more money, and so I quit that and got a job out in

Nehalem, Oregon, working on the rigging and cutting off knots from the logs and

sniping `em . I learned to work at most everything in a logging camp .

Theodore Swanson : The donkey was the machine that gave the power to haul the

logs. You had a long cable, and we used to go up to a thousand feet with that cable

to hook it onto a log. Then we pulled it toward the donkey . They sometimes had

as many as three and four donkeys stretched out in one line, to pull logs through

the woods .

We didn't use the donkey on Sunday, so it was cooled off then . The steam wasdown. So on Monday morning I'd get up at 4 :30, I believe it was . I had a lanternand I walked up the hill to where the donkey was and steamed up the donkey so thatthere was steam . It was ready to haul logs when the crew came at 7 :00. Thenmother sent the lunch for me with the crew that came up to the donkey .

Well, then we went to work, and I had to saw the wood, pack the water andput it in a barrel. I kept on like that all day, and when I got back home at night,that was the first warm meal that I had during the day. Then on Tuesday morning,I didn't have to go so early because the donkey didn't take long to steam up . Sothat's the way that was .

The donkey and its engineers brought logs to the water, where they were coaxedto mills, or as Max Wilson recounts, led to dams on their way to the mills :

Max Wilson

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- Photo by David Lee Myers,Courtesy of Oral History

Collection, WashingtonState Archives

Max Wilson : When they got to logging heavy in the Naselle country, they builtsplash dams in all of the forks . They had these dams with gates on `em, so theycould open them . They would close the gate, and that made a backwater behindthe darn. They would log into that backwater, and then once a week they would openthat gate and sluice all those logs down the river .

They timed those dams to open so that when the water got to the main stream,all the water hit there at the same time . And it came with a head about 20 feet

high . The logs and the whole works just come a hell-a-whooping down that river .

I got caught in a canyon up there once, and I head a noise coming, and I looked

up the river a thousand feet, and here come that wall of water. And those logs

were traveling faster than the water. They would come out to the front of the

water and fall off, down into the bed of the river . They made the damnedest racket

you ever heard . They'd just a-rumble and a-groan and a-grunt and a-bang anda-smash .

As Max Wilson and Leslie McEvoy remember it, the lumbermen of Pacific andWahkiakum Counties lived in small and unsanitary bunkhouses and ate bad food :

Max Wilson : You know, loggers are the most independent outfit that you eversaw in your life . You just don't push a logger around ; that's all there is to it .

At least, that is the way it was in the days when I was in the woods . The boys

were never happy with the cooks. They'd go to the boss and tell him : "That

cook isn't fit to feed hogs ; we want a change in cooks" . An then he would fire

one cook and hire another one . And that happened about three or four different

times .

Leslie McEvoy, Wahkiakum County : Alger's Camp used to have about twenty

men to each of these buckhouses. The pigs would run loose and they'd sleep

Alger's Camp, 1914Photo courtesy of Oral History Collection, Washington State Archives

underneath your bunkhouse and keep you awake all night . Where we washed ourhands and face was a big long trough . Everybody dipped into that trough - itwasn't very sanitary. We had one great big stove in the middle of them bunkhouses,

and one fellow would open the door to let out the heat, and the next guy wouldcome along and shut the door and that's the way it went .

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Conditions in those legendary logging camps were greatly improved after thelumbermen's strike of 1917, engineered primarily by the I.W.W . - Industrial Worksof the World. Then, improved technology brought in new saws and locomotives, andfinally log trucks . By the time of those improvements, all the giant trees of thenineteenth-century forests had been taken, and logging had lost its once romanticflavor .

Alger's Locomotive 1918

Photo courtesy of Oral History Collection, Washington State Archives

Max Wilson : Now you've got to go clear back up on the Olympic Peninsula to

find an old-growth tree, and I guess there's not too many of them . That was

before the days of log trucks . I remember well when the first log trucks came .

They were a-hard-tired Macks, with a chain drive. Big four-cylinder engine on `em .

Charles Nelson, Pacific County : No chain saws in those days . Those days I could

saw through a three-and-a-half foot log without stopping for rest. I couldn't do

that now .

Theodore Swanson : Logging has changed so much in recent years that I wouldn't

know the first thing if I was going to run a logging outfit . They have different

ways and big machinery to use . When we were going about it in our own way, It

was a lot of hand work . It's not so many years back that they started using the

power saw, whoever discovered or invented that . All kinds of different things have

transpired and changes have been made . They have made changes even in people's

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minds to think otherwise than they did in my day . Plus, everything else has changed .

There is no likeness or anything . How crazy, isn't it?

John Taylor and Bill McKenzie - 1910- Photo from Pacific County Historical Society Collection

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THEODORE SWANSON:

Recollections of the LateNineteenth Century

Edited by Judith Espinola

Theodore Swanson was a long-time resident of Wahkiakum County, Washington,where he was involved in logging and the lumber mill business from his boyhoodin the 1890's, until his retirement shortly before the beginning of World War II.He was born in 1882, in Michigan, to which his parents had immigrated from Swedentwo years before . He died in November of 1979, at the age of 97 .

In this "Voices of Washington State" program, he recounts, the events whichaffected his very early life : The immigration of his parents, their move fromLudington, Michigan, to Grays River, Washington, the economic depression of 1893,and his career beginnings in the logging business .

Swanson first tells of his parents' trip to this country and migration fromMichigan to a small community in the southwestern part of Washington :

Theodore Swanson : They were from Warmland, Sweden, and arrived in NewYork about 1880 . They were married in Sweden in June . June was the marriagemonth over there for most of them . After about six weeks, I believe, they took

passage for New York. And then went across the states from New York to Michigan .

They had no relatives or friends to meet them, and didn't know the language . But

then Dad was a guy who liked to travel around and see things, so he decided we'll

go to the U .S.A . So that's how he left Sweden . When he got to Ludington, hewent to work in a sawmill . At one time, I remember, he had rented some land,and he raised great big onions. I couldn't have been more than about four years old

then, but I can remember those onions on the roof, a lean-to roof that they had bythe house, and they piled them up there to dry .

Then there was a woman in Custer, Michigan - not far from Ludington -who had a brother in Grays River ; and this brother had written to his sister thatthere was such a mild climate in Grays River, and land to take and timber .

When we came to Grays River, there were six Norwegian families . There isanother puzzle which will never be answered : how did those Norwegians manageto get to Grays River from Hammerfest, Norway, the farthest northern city in theworld?

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IF

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So then, instead of going on to the Indian territory, Dad went to work andthey got a ticket for Grays River, Washington . I can remember when we left ;it was in December ; it was cold . We had good clothes on, too, and of course, were(not cold, because kids never get cold like older people . But I can remember thatit was cold . Well, then we got to Milwaukee, and there we had to wait forawhile for a train to take us across the land . I think it took four or five days before,we got through, coming across the Rocky Mountains . It was so steep that theyhad hooked on three locomotives to pull over the grade . An then we came along asfar as Kalama - that was the end of the railroad at that time .

We went on to Portland, and stayed a night in Portland . The next morningwe got on one of these sternwheelers for Astoria . Then we had to get on a smallsteamer from Astoria to Grays River .

The place where the house was, that my folks came to and my uncles hadbuilt for them, was about a quarter of a mile from Gorley's house . It was not toosteep, but it was uphill . I can imagine how hard it must have been for my motherto come from a place in Sweden, and then lived in the city of Ludington . InSweden they had built their places like a little town - I would say ten homesmaybe. That was the custom that they had where they had quite a body of levelland . At Grays River, up in the woods, they were a quarter of a mile at leastfrom any neighbor, and the baby was two months old, my sister Ida .

JOHN & ANNA SWANSON(Theodore's Parents c. 1880's)

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THEODORE, UNIDENTIFIED MAN& STEAM DONKEY (c. 1920's)

- Photo courtesy Ted and Sally Swanson, Naselle

We had to pack food in ; there was no transportation into there until later on .And all the furniture that they had was split out of cedar shake and made up in totable and chairs, boxes. In those days they had a lot of wooden boxes ; everythingwas packed in wooden boxes and the light was from kerosene lamps, so they boughtkerosene in ten-gallon boxes .

After settling in Grays River, Swanson's father logged forty acres of his brother'sland until 1893. He then went into business with another lumberman brother, but aneconomic depression hit the country and the price of lumber dropped drastically :

Theodore Swanson : I was nine years old when the Depression of 1893 came about .Harrison had been President up to '92 . As soon as Cleveland got in, a panic cameabout, and that brought on a very severe Depression . As I remember it, there wasn'tany money around . I lived out in the country, of course, but it was the same allover the United States, I'm sure . Nobody had any money, except the ones whowere rich, of course, and the ones that did have it didn't go ahead and use it . Therewas no work ; I know my folks had two men that came into our home. They hadno jobs, and my folks let `em live there with us ; helped a little bit once in a while,because there was no money . A ten cent piece at that time was as much to us as adollar is now.

THEODORE and ALBERTSWANSON,

BEFORE 1900,BROTHERS

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- Photo courtesy of OralHistory Collection,

Washington State Archives

The biggest part of the business that was done was by barter . I remember myDad traded one thousand fence pickets to a farmer for an old tough cow . But welived over the tough days . Of course the farmers had gardens, raised potatoes .

1 here was no grain . There was some oats fed to the cattle . Some farmers had

twelve to fourteen cows and from that they made about sixty dollars a month. And

that was big . We looked up to those farmers, because my folks didn't have any

land, a farm, or anything. They had one cow for milk for their own use . Outside

of that they had nothing . So the farmers were not in bad shape ; and when it came

+ to clothes, my Mother got hand-me-down clothes from a woman who had been

working for some people in the city . They had discarded their clothes, which were

usable. I have lived through the different periods of time and the Depression . ThisAone of 1893, was the worst one for the people . The one we had in the 1930's, was

bad, all right, but it doesn't come up to the one in the '90's.

The Spanish-American War kinda boosted the things up . Demand for thingsbloomed up because of the war, about 1898, like it always has in this nation .

Theodore Swanson began working with his father as a teenager . By 1908, hehad opened his own shingle mill in Rosburg, Wahkiakum County .

Theodore Swanson : The first one burnt down, and then we rebuilt again, and thatstayed around until the conditions got so we couldn't make both ends meet . So we

had to quit and sell to an outfit for ten cents on the dollar. That was a tough one!

The margin of profit was so small that it was absolutely the hardest time of my life .

In addition to operating the shingle mill, Swanson established an unusuallysuccessful gypo logging company. The "gypo" loggers were independent contractorswho supplied mills with lumber. In 1940, Swanson retired, moving from Rosburg toCathlamet in the last years of his life . He had seen tremendous changes in logging -in the technology of getting lumber out of the woods and to the mills, and in theconducting of the milling business itself :

Theodore Swanson : In my young teenage days, any young fellow or old fellowwho could handle the crosscut saw, the mattock, and the pick needed no furthereducation . He was his own master then. He didn't have to have anything likethey have now-a-days . Now they've gone completely nuts . So that's the waythat was .

THEODORE SWANSON

1975

- Photo by David Myers,courtesy of Oral History

Collection, WashingtonState Archives

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Early Loggingin Western Washington

by Robert Ficken

Logging has always been at the center of life in Washington west of the

Cascades. The earliest white settlers in the land north of the Columbia River were,by necessity, loggers . Timber had to be cleared to make room for farms, a laboriousprocess that yielded profit in terms of logs sales to the pioneer sawmills of theColumbia. As the lumber industry expanded in the years following the California

Gold Rush, the farmer-loggers were supplanted by individuals working from choicerather than necessity .

Drawn by oxen, logs were hauled along greased skidroads to the banks ofstreams, where they were formed into rafts for towing to sawmills . On the riversof southwestern Washington, crude dams were often thrown up to store sufficientwater to float the logs out to tidewater and mills .

During most of the Nineteenth century, logging in that region remained back-

ward in comparison with that of Puget Sound, where the largest lumbering operationswere located. In the closing years of the century, the industry expanded rapidly onGrays Harbor and Willapa Harbor, rivaling the Sound for dominance of thestate's industry . The demand for logs increased and the most accessible timber

was removed. Important advances in technology facilitated moving logging activitiesfurther and further away from the streams . Oxen could haul logs only a shortdistance, but the application of steam power greatly increased the potential extent

of operations . Moreover, the building of logging railroads eliminated dependenceon water transportation . Even during times of low water, operators could movelogs from the rugged interior to mills .

These and further technological developments - such as the high lead loggingsystem first put in use early in the Twentieth century - had a considerable impacton the makeup of the industry. In the early days, only a small amount of moneywas required to become a logger and operations tended to be both numerous andsmall. But growing reliance on railroads and mechanical devices meant that loggershad to invest large amounts of capital. The demand of workers for better wagesand living conditions and the need to acquire extensive holdings of timber increasedthe financial burden . The logging industry became dominated by large firms ableto meet the expenses involved in removal of timber. Small operators survived, butno longer as the focus of the industry .

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The inhabitants of southwestern Washington have always relied on the forest .Indian, pioneer, immigrant logger with his axe and crosscut saw, modern woods-worker with hardhats and chainsaws, polished business executives-all have dependedon logging for their livelihood . The history of the region runs along the streamsand skidroads and railroad rights-of-way, the great avenues of forest exploitation .

Pacific County Logging Brandsby Larry Weathers

In 1890 the first state legislature for the new State of Washington enacteda law to protect the ownership of floating logs and log boom equipment . The lawstated that every person or partnership who put logs or timber into any river, creek,lake, marsh or ditch in the State of Washington, for the purpose of rafting themin a log boom to a sawmill or any other place of sale, had to mark them at the end .surface of each log . Although the law has been revised several times in the pastninety years, it is still the law today .

The decade following 1890 was a time of tremendous development in the loggingindustry of western Washington . Freshly harvested logs filled the rivers and creeksof Pacific and Grays Harbor counties year around . Pictures of the time make itappear that every piling in Willapa Bay had a log boom fastened to it. The potentialfor accidental loss of logs in stormy weather, or because of unscrupulous "log rustlers",was particularly high . The enactment of the log marking, or branding, law wasmeant to ensure that stray logs would be returned to the owner who cut them .

Originally the law stated that each owner who chose a mark, or logging brand,had to register it with the auditor of each county where it was used . A diagramand written description of the brand were presented to the auditor who checked tomake sure it was different from all other brands already recorded . When a brandwas approved the auditor entered it in a special book, known as a "Log Brand

Register", for a fee of 25c. One owner could register several different brands if heso desired . Anyone who neglected to register a brand, forged a brand, or tried todestroy a brand on a log was subject to stiff penalties .

In 1925 the law was revised so that owners were required to register their brandswith the Office of the Secretary of State of Washington . When the brand wasapproved the secretary entered it in a book, called the "Forest Products BrandRegister", for a fee of $3 .00. The law was further revised to allow owners to submit

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either a free-hand drawing of the brand, or a piece of leather with the brand burnedinto it. The present law still allows this option but it is an antiquated practice .

The revision of 1925 also required that a person buying a brand from anotherowner had to renew the brand under the new owner's name . The brand was thenregistered with a large "C" surrounding it . This special notation around the markmade it a "catch brand" .

In 1957 the law was further changed to read that the supervisor of forestry inthe Department of Conservation and Development (now the Department of NaturalResources) was to maintain the "Forest Products Brand Register" . Since 1949 ownersof log brands are required to renew them with the DNR every five years. The feeis now $5.00 for each new, renewed or assigned brand registered .

Log brands are similar to cattle brands . They come in many shapes, sizes andletter-number combinations . Many are in the shape of the owner's monogram butothers are in the shape of keystones, diamonds, keys, crosses and other geometricoutlines .

The log branding tool looks like a hammer . Welded on one end is a plate withthe brand symbol raised upon it . The brand is indented into the end of the log whenit is struck with the hammer . When swung by an experienced brander a mark willbe left that can be identified several feet into the log. New techniques make it;possible to detect a brand even where an idention does not show . So buckingoff the branded end and claiming the log will not work . More than one log rustlerhas found out the hard way .

Possession of branded logs without the authority of the registered owner is un-lawful under the law . Log patrols are the only legal salvagers of stray logs foundin the mudflats or along the ocean beaches . According to the DNR the need forbrands is still imperative . Stray logs still cover the beaches and river banks aftersevere storms and such natural disasters as the explosion of Mount St . Helens . Logrustling, especially when cedar logs are involved, is a frequent occurrence even today .Perhaps this is the reason why there are over 6,000 brands registered in the state ;ITT Rayonier has a total of 890, the largest number registered, and Weyerhaeuserhas 250 brands registered .

Historians interested in the old Pacific County log brand record will find itsafely stored on a shelf in the Auditor's office . The index at the front of the bookdisplays the names of many of the most notable loggers in Pacific County . The fol-lowing brands are a sample .

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aN.

11WJohnson and Hedlund

Knappton1907

JA-°H . S . McGowan

McGowan1911

L. Panfilio and G. GrimmMenlo1924

Matt and Frank JohnsonNasel1911

CO

PG

Fred LovinRaymond

1947

.au.

0J . W . KleebSouth Bend

1903

Otto RichterMenlo1926

F . J . VetterFrances1924

FA.

19

H .J . EllisRaymond1893

F. A. HazeltineSouth Bend

1906

E T

S L . DennisTheodore Wilson

RaymondBay Center

19231947

A. Alexander and E . FarrarWillapa1890

88George Bridgewater

Raymond1948

YWilson and Stratton

Raymond1916

I. N. WentworthSouth Bend

1895

Campbell and HabersetzerFrances

1896

km

X

Art W. HammondSouth Bend

1914

W . C . InglinRaymond

1948

S.R. KirschHolcomb1913

Weyerhaeuser Co .Tacoma1917

Our Cover PhotoThe Lumber Exchange Building was built in 1907 by John L . Myers, Warren P .

Cressy and J . W. Kleeb . A man named Troutman of Pendleton, Oregon, was thearchitect, and the construction work was done by H . F. Wilder and James Taylor ofSouth Bend .

J. L. Myers was the first to move into the new building . He was a pharmacistwho had lived in South Bend since 1891 . He opened his new drug store in the cornerlocation of the building in the summer of 1907 . W. P. Cressy opened his departmentstore in the remaining section of the building in 1908 . The second floor was dividedinto offices for various companies .

From 1907 to 1970 the corner location remained a drug store featuring Rexallproducts . It was owned by J. L. Myers from 1907-1920, John S . Sempill from 1920-1959, and Don Cox from 1959-1970.

On Sunday afternoon April 26, 1970, the Pacific County Museum officially openedin the corner location . Don Cox had closed his drug store and allowed the museum tomove in. Mr. Cox had graciously allowed the museum the use of the front displaywindow and several display cases earlier in the year . Ruth Dixon explained that themuseum gradually moved in the front door as Don Cox was moving out the back .Several of the drug store display cases were left in the building on loan from Mr .Cox . The cases are still on loan from him .

The society leased the corner premises for ten years under various owners .Helen Davis, a member of the society and owner of the building from 1973-1979,appreciated the non-profit status of the museum and only charged a nominal rent .Throughout the decade of the 1970's the museum flourished under the stewardship ofRuth Dixon, Virginia Olsen, Nina Wolfenbarger, Buelah May Alexander, and manyother selfless volunteers. Members and visitors alike bought books, left memorialsto relatives and brought artifacts to add to the museum collection .

On April 30, 1980, the museum closed its doors at the Lumber Exchange andmoved into newly renovated quarters at 1008 W . Robert Bush Drive . The new museumis only a block from the Lumber Exchange .

The new building will be discussed in our next issue .

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