The Trees That Make Us
Potlatch Pine Kings
An exploration of place and the important history and legacy of the White Pine
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"Potlatch" a Chinook word for a Native American celebration of goodwill and gift giving
About the Potlatch Corp.
Historical Context:
In 1900 Frederick Weyerhaeuser and investors created the Clearwater Timber company. Together they purchased land filled with forests of white pine in North Idaho. In 1903 the Potlatch Lumber Company was created by Weyerhaeuser and took on the name and became the central location of the first mill for the company. In 1906 Potlatch’s first mill was constructed along the river. With the construction of the mill, the company decided to form a town to help bring in employees. The PLC formed 200 houses with in the first year, built a hospital, top of the art schools and added over 50 miles of connecting railroads to surround towns and cities, like Spokane Washington.
For the next 70 years the company expanded and owned and operated numerous mill sights throughout North Idaho and Washington. Going through expansions, acquisitions and acquiring affiliations the Potlatch Corporation grew to be the world’s largest producer of White Pine board creating one of the largest monetary producing lumber companies in industry. The Potlatch Lumber Company was largest white pine mill in the world, and one of the largest mills in all of the United States.
To this day many affiliates still run and operate mill sites and are still the leading manufacturers in the world. The Weyerhaeuser family legacy is still affiliated with the lumber industry as well as many other important business and political affairs in the United States. The late Frederick Weyerhaeuser is still the United States 12th richest man with a net worth of over $90 billion.
White Pine
Pinus Stobus
"The white pine is the largest conifer in the Northeast. It has a straight trunk with a crown of horizontal branches. It can grow to be over 100 feet tall and its trunk can have a diameter of 3-4 feet. It has slender, greenish-blue needles that are 2.5-5 inches long that grow in bundles of five."
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The White Pine is plentiful in the Pacific Northwest. When investors and loggers came from the Great Lakes region they sought out similar land and trees. Potlatch was a prime location because it was nestled in the center of a large White Pine forest.
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This land was similar in the fact that it was an old growth forest like what used to be near the Great Lakes region. Trees were big, and they were plentiful. Many of the timber collected from the 1900’s through 1910 were old growth trees towering above 100 feet and often averaging around 5-6 feet in diameter. However, because of the then logging practices, and because of the Big Burn of 1910, these giant forests were lost.
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Potlatch Company owned the timber, not the land. So when the timber was gone in location, so was the company.
Connections to the 1910 Fire
Big Trees and the Big Burn
Workers and homesteaders worked together to fight the 1910 fire. Potlatch Mill wasn’t effected because of how the employees worked to create a fire line to protect property and buildings.
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The U.S forest service ended up creating the forest fire service because of how intense and how much damage the fire caused but also because of the how community members and workers came together to fight the blaze. It took national efforts that year to fight the fires. Many lumberjacks and few mill works ended up working for the Forest Service Department and some even became Fire Chiefs.
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​Part of the reason the fires were so intense is because of the white pine. they have more hydrocarbon than any other pine and created a gaseous environment that caused higher heats, explosions and hurricane categorized winds.
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While mills weren’t effected future forest land was, like the Clearwater and Elk River mill site. Potlatch Company built two new mills following the years of the Big Burn. The company took advantage of some of the fire destruction by using burned land as mill sites. Loggers tried to utilized as much of the lost timber as possible and over the years helped repopulate decimated land by turning and reseeding soil.