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About Vernonia's voice. (Vernonia, OR) 2007-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 18, 2018)
in other words january18 2018 7 The Good Ol ’ Days By Tobie Finzel Other Vernonia Area Mills While the Oregon-American (O-A) Lumber Mill was the predomi- nant employer and heart of the city’s economy from 1922 to 1958, there were numerous other lumber and shingle mills that came and went over the course of the town’s development in the latter de- cades of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. Before that discussion, how- ever, there was another anniversary, the sixtieth, that we failed to note last month while focused on the tenth anniversary of the Flood of 2007. At noon on De- cember 20, 1957, the O-A mill whistle blew for the last time. By then, most of the finished lumber had been sold and shipped, and the majority of the work- ers had been laid off. The whistle that signaled the start and end of each day as well as the start and end of the lunch break was so familiar that people tended not to notice it much until it went perma- nently silent. A new era in Vernonia had begun. There were numerous small lumber mills that flourished and faded starting with the Brouse & Detrick Mill in Pittsburg established in the late 1870s. The first sawmill in Vernonia was built in 1893 on a site near the present day Banks-Vernonia Trail bridge over Rock Creek. Owned by W. A. Harris, a Mr. Ridgeway logged for the mill with a team of oxen. Among the employees of this mill were Newt Parker, Green Ad- ams, Otto Malmsten, Charles Ichman and R. Sessman. Sessman built the mill and served as its millwright. In 1907 Otto Malmsten’s son Franklin decided to build a sawmill with three of his four brothers (Charles, Sidney and Elon) and a Mr. Hurt. They called their business “Vernonia Lumber and Fuel.” The site, across the river from the north end of Pebble Creek Road, would later be the east end of the O-A mill pond. First Mr. Hurt and then each brother successively sold out his share until Franklin was the remaining owner. In 1922 O-A pur- chased the land from Franklin Malmsten and twenty acres of the former pasture west of the mill site was dug out to hold water pumped from the Nehalem for its mill pond, now Vernonia Lake. One of the larger mills, Lindsay Lumber, was established in March 1926 by Mr.’s. Lindsay, Bennett and Bear at the west of Rose Avenue on the long dormant site of what was called “The Old Vernonia Mill.” This site was sold in 1927 and the mill moved to Treharne, possibly at the Nehalem River end of Wilson Cutoff Road. The mill output averaged 40,000 board feet of lumber per day. Fifteen men worked in the mill and twelve in the woods. Accord- ing to a March 1930 Vernonia Eagle ar- ticle, Lindsay Lumber secured a timber holding near the Washington-Colum- bia County line that held 10,000,000 board feet of timber. This temporarily squelched the rumor that the mill was going to move out. After a slowdown during the Great Depression in the mid- 1930s, the mill resumed regular opera- tions in 1935 but finally closed Vernonia operations on April 12, 1940, when the company moved to Springfield, Oregon. While the O-A lands were rich with Douglas fir, four percent of the tim- ber was cedar and nine percent hemlock. The cedar was valuable for shingle and shake production, and O-A at first sold its cedar on the open market. In 1925, they leased a parcel on the eastern edge of the mill pond and built the Johnston & McGraw Shingle Mill. J&M converted the cedar logs to shakes and shingles at a rate of 15,000 board feet per day. The shingle mill was idle from the early 1930s through 1934 (the O-A Mill was similarly idle from 1933-1936) and re- opened in February 1935. Shut down by a strike for some months in 1935, it burned down in 1936 and was never re- built. The last carload of cedar products shipped out in December of that year. O-A returned to its practice of selling ce- dar to independent mills until 1957. Following the close of World War II, demand for housing skyrocket- ed. The boom lasted from 1947 to 1952. The O-A owned lands were being de- pleted, and the mill bought timber from independent operators in and around the Nehalem Valley. The cedar supply simi- larly diminished so the sale of cedar logs from the O-A pond became an important source of revenue. In the late 1940s, there were seven shingle mills in the Upper Ne- halem Valley, but the largest was the Cedarwood Timber Company owned by L. C. Cotner of Los Angeles. C. E. “Ed” Miller had come to Vernonia in 1945 having worked in other shingle mills in the northwest. He and his wife lived at the Hy-Van Hotel (now the Ride Inn) and took their meals at town restaurants, especially Ma Vike’s Café. His wife worked with him as a shingle packer. In 1949, he purchased Cedarwood from Cotner, and the couple moved to a house near the mill that was located just west of Rose Avenue on what is now Maple Street. At the peak of his business, Ed ran three shifts a day with ten men per crew. In 1950, daily output was 50 squares of shingles and 8 squares of shakes. Cedarwood was a steady outlet for O-A logs with its own log pond along a short spur line of the railroad. Logs were sent by train from the O-A pond to Miller’s pond. The company’s shakes and shingles were shipped by truck and rail to points all over the United States. By 1966 Cedarwood was the only remaining cedar mill in Columbia County. In 1981, Miller sold the mill to the Strassel brothers and moved the heavy equipment to their site on Stras- sel Road, just off Highway 26. Ed con- tinued for a time with a crew of three making hand-split shakes. Many local residents who worked there still share stories of that mill, Ed Miller and the others who worked there. Some per- manently bear the reminders of the dan- gerous work with missing or shortened fingers. John Cunnick, the original Tim- berbound composer who lived at Keasey in the 1970s and befriended many who worked in the woods and mills, wrote a song, “Cedar Mill Boys” that captures that profession: “Got all my fingers, ex- cept for three.” For an in-depth article on shingle mill work, see the memoir of the Crowder Shingle Mill in Birkenfeld at http://www.crowder.org/voices/shin- gles.htm\ From Virgil Powell’s Diary Virgil Powell (1887-1963) was a long-time resident whose family had a farm in the Upper Nehalem Valley be- tween Natal and Pittsburg. Each year from 1906 until 1955, he kept a regular diary of his activities. One of the many jobs Virgil held over his lifetime was as a fireman at shingle mills and the O-A mill. The main duty of the fireman was to tend the fire and keep its associated steam-generating boiler going, but he also served as a free hand who tended to everything else that needed doing in smaller mills. Before that, however, he helped build the Johnston & McGraw Shingle Mill in 1925 and later worked there. Monday, July 27, 1925: Commenced working on shingle mill. Awful hot all day. Tuesday, July 28: Worked at building shingle mill. Awful hot all day. Thursday, July 30: Put rafters up on shingle mill. Awful hot. Friday, August 7: Worked on shingle mill all day. Hot & smoky. Brown’s house burned 9 P.M. Tuesday, November 6, 1928: Tallied at shingle mill. Pretty fine day. Over town voted 6 P.M. Wednesday, November 14: Loaded shingles most of day. Pretty fair day. Over to Bert Nelsons evening. Wednesday, November 21: Loaded shingles till 1:30 P.M. Over town to my lots afternoon. Very fine day. Wednesday, November 28: Loaded shingles forenoon. Dug out new well afternoon. Very good day. Monday, February 17: Fired (i.e. was the fireman) at shingle mill 6 to 2 P.M. Up to Lods 3 P.M. Very fine day. The Vernonia Pioneer Museum is located at 511 E. Bridge Street and is open from 1 to 4 pm on Saturdays and Sundays (ex- cluding holidays) all year. From June through mid-September, the museum is also open on Fridays from 1 to 4 pm. There is no charge for admission but do- nations are always welcome. Become a member of the museum for an annual $5 fee to receive the periodic newsletter. We now have a page on the Vernonia Hands on Art website, www.vernonia- handsonart.org If you are a Facebook user, check out the Vernonia Pioneer Museum page. The museum volunteers are always pleased to enlist additional volunteers to help hold the museum open and assist in other ways. Please stop by and let one of the volunteers know of your interest in helping out. TOO BUSY? Call your LOCAL bookkeeper R Y OLL A P PLUS LLC Edi Sheldon 503-429-1819 edisheldon@gmail.com Licensed tax consultant • Full service payroll Personal & small business bookkeeping • QuickBooks assistance CORPS, S-CORPS, LLC, Partnerships • Personal one-on-one service LTC #29629 - Oregon licensed tax consultant RTRP #P00448199 - designated as a registered tax return preparer by the Internal Revenue Service The IRS does not endorse any particular individual tax return preparer. For more information on tax return preparers, go to www.IRS.gov. GET PREPARED FOR WINTER • chains • antifreeze • winter tires mounted & balanced • wipers • generators • kerosene • flashlights • boots • batteries • lamp oil • gas cans • candles • propane Family owned & operated for over 45 years 834 Bridge St., Vernonia (503) 429-6364
