SAW MILLS Circa 1948

[NORCALLOGGER]

Hi all,
I don't know if anyone would be interested at all but I have a series of about 300 aerial photos of
Northern California sawmills from the 1948-1952 era.

They represent all sizes and kinds of mills and milling operations.
I will post a few pictures and if anyone is interested I can post a few more.
If not we will let it die like everthing else.


This is the Cal-Ore Lumber Co. mill at Redding, CA


Planing mill at Cottonwood, CA.  Name unknown


The Ralph Smith Lumber Co. mill at Canby, CA


Probably hard to see in these low res. copies of the scans but there is a lot of historical information revealed in the original photos.
Later
Rick

[Ray Dunakin]

Great pics, very interesting! Some of those small mills would be good prototypes to model.

[Chuck Doan]

I agree, these are great!

[W.P. Rayner]

Very interesting photos Rick. Do you happen to have any in your collection of the mill here at North Fork? It was originally the Associated Lumber & Box Company when it opened in 1942. It subsequently changed ownership and name to General Box Company, American Forest Products, Bendix Forest Products, Sequoia Products and finally South Fork Timber Industries until it shut down in 1994. The mill site is still here though partially cleaned up and redeveloped, managed now by the North Fork Community Development Council.

Paul

[Ken Hamilton]

Bring'em on Rick.  These are great photos with tons of modeling info.
How did you get all those?

[NORCALLOGGER]

Hi all,
Glad there is a little interest.
To me these pictures are very intriguing but I have found through the years that what interests me very seldom is of interest to anyone else. 


Paul,
Don't know if this is pertinent or not but is what I have as per the following captions.  I do have about 2 dozen pictures marked as "unknown" which is really of no help but could be what your looking for.

Associated Box


General Box "Distribution"


Hi Ken,
Long story on the photo acquisition.  Are you ready?

Several years ago a customer came into the shop and during our conversations he noticed some train/logging pictures on the walls that I had taken.  He mentioned he had a bunch of old sawmill negetives that he had inherited and wondered if I would be interested in seeing them.  Well Duhh.

He brought in a box of about 5 to 6 hundred negitives that were "loosly" marked/identified and let me sort and catalog them.  I was able to firmly identify about 300 of them based on information contained with the original collection and personal knowdledge.

To get 300  8 X 10 prints made was just to costly so I started looking around for alternatives.  I struck a deal with the County Historical Society whereby I would pay for the paper and chemicals and they would use volunteer labor to make the prints.  There cut was being able to keep a duplicate negetive for the archives.  Win Win for all concerned, I got the pictures, the Historical Society got copies for their use and the original owner got his  negitives back.

If the interest is there still I will go through and find pictures of the mills that I lived at (that provided family income) when I was very young.
Later
Rick

[NORCALLOGGER]

Well,
I will post a few more only because I said I would.


This is the mill I remember from my earliest childhood, 4 to 5 years old.  According to my Mother we lived in a shack just out of this picture to the upper left.  Step father was a saw filer with a drinking problem so we moved from  mill to mill on a pretty regular basis.  This mill was the Butte Creek Lumber Co. just east of Bridgeville, Humboldt County, CA.
Maybe you can see in the picture that the logs were dry decked and brought into the mill with a forklift up a ramp to the saw deck/carriage. 


Next on our tour is the mill at Bridgeville, Humboldt County, CA.  The community was named because of the bridge into it at the upper left in photo.  The shack we lived in was just up the road at top center of picture.  You may or may not recall that this community came up for sale on EBay a year or so back.  It sold then the deal fell through and it was relisted with no takers.  The present day community is not much bigger just lose the mill and add a few houses.


Moving into Trinity County California now.  This is the mill at Hawkins Bar, a community on Highway 299.  This highway is a main east west route in Northern California, that is the dirt road you see in the foreground  If you look closly at the A-frame log dump unloading a truck you can see that it is powered by an old sedan automobile.


Moss Lumber Companies mill at Burnt Ranch, Trinity County, California.  This community is also along highway 299 although it doesn't show up in this picture.  Notice that there is a saw mill as well as a planing mill using a common teepee burner.  The Moss lumber Company was/is a large business in this part of the state, in fact, as I am typing this I am hearing a commercial on TV for their company.  They no longer own or operate saw mills but are large in the building supply business.



OK, last one for tonight.  This is Willow Creek Lumber Company at, of all places, Willow Creek California, which is one of the larger mountain communities in Humboldt County.  We lived there in 1952, the town doesn't show in this photo.  How do you like that cold deck of logs, looks like they will stay busy through the winter.  Notice the truck shop in the lower left center, just over the roof you can see a donkey engine and sled, looks like it has been converted to diesel/gas.


Thanks for taking a look.
Rick

[W.P. Rayner]

Don't know if this is pertinent or not but is what I have as per the following captions.  I do have about 2 dozen pictures marked as "unknown" which is really of no help but could be what your looking for.
Rick

Thanks for checking Rick. I don't think it's either of those, definitely not the lower shot, it's much too big a complex and too urban. The upper picture looks a little more like the site, but again I think it's too big an operation. I'm digging round here to see if I can come up with a photo somewhere, they seem to be very scarce.

Paul

[Ray Dunakin]

Cool stuff. Do you have any mills from the Freshwater area? Or Arcata? I lived in those places in 1964-65.

[W.P. Rayner]

Rick:

Actually I now think the first photo may very well be the North Fork mill. In the Google Satellite image below you can see how strikingly similar the general topography is, road layout, land forms, and the general layout of the mill is similar to the scars left on the landscape some 60 plus years later.



I haven't been able to find any vintage shots of the mill. This small photo is the site just after the mill shut down, but it's so small and distant, it's not of much use.



Paul

[NORCALLOGGER]

Paul,
Looks like we nailed it.



Ray,
Of course I do.

Rick

[eTraxx]

W.P. .. put those coordinates into Google Earth .. and tilt it a bit