March 2017
FEATURES
The Southwest Portland Post • 7
Remember when Copeland Lumber was located on Southwest 31st near Capitol Highway?
elevated to board chairman, he was
succeeded by his only child, Helen
Joe, who was married to William
Alexander Whitsell.
In 2000, Helen Joe decided to sell
the company and retire. At that
time Copeland Lumber had 68 retail
outlets in Oregon, Washington,
California, Nevada and Arizona;
1000 employees, and annual sales
of $200 million.
There was no single buyer for all
Copeland’s stores, so the company
was broken apart and groups of
stores sold to different companies.
The Copeland Lumber name
lives on in Newport, Florence, and
Waldport, Ore.
In 1999 a group of its employees
got together and purchased the
Newport and Waldport yards from
Copeland Lumber Yards Inc., and
have since opened another store in
Florence.
Tim Lyman is president of the
Multnomah Historical Association.
Research material for this story was
provided by the World Forestry Center.
Copeland Lumber, Multnomah, 1985. (Photo courtesy Multnomah Historical Association)
OLD MULTNOMAH
By Tim Lyman
Editor’s Note: A display advertisement
for Copeland Lumber Yards appeared
in the Sunday Oregonian, May 31,
1925. Mentioned at the bottom were
five locations including Southeast
72nd Street, Portland; Vancouver,
Washington; Forest Grove, Oregon;
Olympia, Washington; and Multnomah
Station, Portland. —Don Snedecor
Joseph W. Copeland was born at
Sumner, Iowa, on Aug. 31, 1886.
His father, Joseph, taught him the
lumber business in yards acquired
or opened in Cresco, Perry, Toledo
and Gardiner, Iowa.
Copeland graduated from high
school at Cresco, Iowa, and then
matriculated to the University of
Minnesota, fully intending to become
a lawyer, but that never happened –
his father got the urge to go west.
The Copeland family moved to
Hood River, Ore., to enter the fruit
growing business in 1908. It was at
Hood River that young Joe, then 22,
worked in the Hood River Bank and
Trust Company.
He also became an officer. Lee A.
Copeland, Joe’s older brother, got the
family back in the lumber business
with purchase of retail yards at
Meridian, Kuna, Star and McKermit,
Idaho. (McKermit no longer exists)
After a few years in the fruit
business, father Joe exercised a
$10,000 mortgage he had on a
lumberyard in the Lents district of
Portland.
Stock was purchased until 1912,
and the elder Copeland was in the
retail lumber business on the West
Coast for the first time.
In 1920 Copeland Lumber
Yards had only five outlets and 20
employees. Only two additional
yards had been added by 1927. In the
meantime, however, father Joseph,
72, died on March 7, 1924.
And death struck the hierarchy
of the Copeland organization again
in 1926 when brother Lee Albert
Copeland died at the age of 43.
Joseph William Copeland, then
40, became president and chief
executive officer in 1926. He guided
the growth and destiny of the
company for 47 years, until stepping
aside to become board chairman a
few days before his 87th birthday
in 1973.
In those 47 years, Joe Copeland
increased his number of yards until
they totaled 84 on Feb. 15, 1974.
Perhaps the most distinguishing
mark of Copeland Lumber Yards,
Inc., was the use of bright, Halloween
orange on the buildings and a big
black cat insignia.
This all came about when the
company, in its early expansion
days, purchased the Fenton Lumber
Company of Fenton, Idaho. The
orange color and black cat were
trademarks of the Fenton firm.
In 1973, when Joe Copeland was
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Deadline for April is March 24.
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