hull-oakes lumber company haer no....

HULL-OAKES LUMBER COMPANY

(Ralph Hull Lumber Company)

(Hull Lumber Company, Inc.)

(W.J. Miller Lumber Company)

23837 Dawson Road

Monroe

Benton County

Oregon

HAER NO. OR-89

PHOTOGRAPHS

XEROGRAPHIC COPIES OF COLOR TRANSPARENCIES

WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA

HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD

National Park Service

Washington, D.C. 20240

ADDENDUM TO HULL-OAKES LUMBER COMPANY (Ralph Hull Lumber Company) (Hull Lumber Company, Inc.) (W.J. Miller Lumber Company) 23837 Dawson Road Monroe Benton County Oregon

REDUCED COPIES OF MEASURED DRAWINGS

HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD National Park Service

Department of the Interior 1849 C Street NW, NC300 Washington, DC 20240

HAER No. OR-89

ADDENDUM TO HULL-OAKES LUMBER COMPANY (Ralph Hull Lumber Company) (Hull Lumber Company, Inc.) (W.J. Millar Lumber Company) 23837 Dawson Road Monroe Benton County Oregon

WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA

HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD National Park Service

Department of the Interior 1849 C Street, NW

Washington, DC 20240

HAER No. OR-89

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HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD

Location:

Date of Construction:

Fabricator/ Builder:

Present Owner:

Present Use:

Significance:

Historian:

Project Information:

~DbE'.JJl::tt.m TO ·. HULL-OAKES LUMBER CO.

(Ralph Hull Lumber Co.) (Hull Lumber Co., Inc.) (W.J. Miller Lumber Co.)

HAER No. OR-89

23837 Dawson Road, Monroe, Benton County, Oregon UTM: Quad: Glenbrook, OR 10/467580/4911970

Winter, 1938-39

Ralph Hull, Hubert K. McBee

Hull-Oakes Lumber Co.; Ralph Hull and Donald Oakes, principals

Saw and planing mill

The Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. is a rare, operating, steam-powered sawmill processing large-diameter Douglas fir trees.

George B. Wisner, August 1997

In May, 1997, the Historic American Engineering Record began documenting the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. steam-powered sawmill in rural south Benton County, Oregon.

CHRONOLOGY

1914

1920

1922

1936

1936

1938-39

1946

1949

1954-55

HULL-OAKES LUMBER CO. HAER No. OR-89

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Fred Malcolm began operating a small sawmill on the site

W.J. Miller leased Malcolm's mill

W.J. Miller built steam-powered sawmill on the site to cut a variety of lumber products and produce "hog" fuel for sale as a primary by-product

W.J. Miller sawmill burns down, idling ninety workers and leaving planing mill and boilers intact

I.P. Miller built sawmill on west end of W.J. Miller mill pond to cut bridge stringers, ties and other railroad items

Ralph Hull and Hubert K. McBee built the Ralph Hull Lumber Co. steam-powered sawmill on east end of W.J. Miller log pond with specific goal of cutting long and largedimension timbers as a primary product

Ralph Hull's brother, Homer, bought the mill, which began operating as the Hull Lumber Co., Inc., with Ralph Hull as manager

Industrial-capacity electricity came to the mill for the first time and company gradually converted from steam to electric power to operate some plant systems

Company installed a used, but more reliable, twin-cylinder steam engine built in 1906, replacing the mill's troublesome singlecylinder engine, and installed a 9' tall band saw to replace less efficient twin circular

1954-55

1955

1959

1966

1970

1981

1986

HULL-OAKES LUMBER COMPANY HAER No. OR-89

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Company installed a used, but more reliable, twin-cylinder steam engine built in 1906, replacing the mill's troublesome singlecylinder engine, and installed a 9' tall band saw to replace less efficient twin circular saws used as the sawmill's primary lumbercutting saws

Ralph Hull and Chester Oakes reformed the company into the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co.,each owning 50 percent.

Company installed a Prescott "gang trimmer," a 44'-long bank of twenty-three circular saws, improving lumber trimming efficiency and speed while upgrading prior system relying on four men and two saws, creating a two-man operation

Company installed 250 horsepower, 440-volt electric motor and related equipment to complete conversion of the plant to electric power, but system was never used as Hull believed it more cost-effective to stay with steam power to operate the plant's heaviest power-using machinery

Company installed log debarking machine and bark chopper or "hog," to capture, process and store log bark first for heat generation at pulp mills and nearby Oregon universities, and starting in 1992, as a lumber-cutting byproduct for landscaping.

I.P. Miller closed his sawmill, auctioning equipment in 1982

First Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. is reformed as Ralph Hull, D.B.A. (Doing Business As) Hull Oakes Lumber Co.

1989


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Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. formed with Ralph Hull as president, together with six employees, Donald Oakes,Wayne Giesy, Ralph Kundert, Arlene Lee, Phil Kundert and Todd Nystrom. The employees bought out Ralph Kundert in 1993, Giesy in 1994.

Introduction


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During the summer of 1997 the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) began the first year of a proposed two-year program to document the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. steam-powered sawmill. The mill is important to the nation's technological history as a rare working example of machinery and methods common to the steam era for Douglas fir sawmilling. An anachronism demonstrating the practical common sense business management style of its founder, it fills a specialized market niche for long and large timbers in the volatile and rapidly changing Pacific Northwest timber industry. The Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. sawmill complex covers approximately 28 acres in a narrow, stream cut valley on the eastern slopes of the Oregon Coast Range in the Pacific Northwest's Douglas fir region. The plant is at the terminus of a Southern Pacific Railroad spur line historically called Dawson Station, approximately three miles west of Bellfountain and ten miles northwest of Monroe in rural south Benton County, Oregon.

Throughout its history, a sawmill, mill pond for working storage of logs prior to sawing, and related planing mill and boiler house have occupied the same 16 acres of the present Hull-Oakes complex. The railroad, built to Dawson in 1910 from a main line that had pushed southward through the Willamette Valley by 1871 provided a vital link between the area's sawmills and their markets. Sawmills have been on the site since 1914, long before Hull built his mill. The largest of the previous mills operated there from 1920 to 1936 when it suffered a fate common to many small early sawmills -- destruction by fire. Hull's uncle, W.J. Miller, operated the earlier sawmill on the site, a frequent circumstance in sparsely settled rural areas where families often operate similar businesses and cooperation is essential to their continued survival. Hull bought and rebuilt the plant, incorporating the boilers and a planing mill from the earlier mill, and secured his uncle's available federal timber supplies. W.J. Miller's cousin, Clarence Miller, operated a sawmill at the west end of what would become Hull's mill pond, and agreed to cut specialty timbers Hull needed to build his new mill in late 1938.


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Ralph Hull built the sawmill during the winter of 1938-39 in the vernacular tradition, without formal plans, for the primary purpose of custom-cutting large timbers from long and large-diameter Douglas fir logs, a premium grade product with a high sale price markup. 1 Constrained by limited finances, and milling much of the construction lumber himself, Hull and local steam engineer Hubert K. McBee built a basic but functional plant containing used machinery of sufficient size to accomplish assembly-line production of dimension lumber and large-timber specialty products. To accommodate changes in machinery and manufacturing processes, Hull-Oakes has modified the buildings over the years with the same folk building methods. Using skills and knowledge acquired by operating earlier sawmills, Hull was well prepared to start his new venture. Specializing in large timbers has economically sustained the company despite its reliance on outdated steam power and machinery now considered obsolete by a modern timber industry.

Industrial-capacity electricity did not reach many rural Benton County areas such as Dawson until 1949, making steampowered sawmills common within the region's timber industry. Steam power had set the industry standard for years; one industry historian claimed it had originally made

1Ralph Hull, oral history interviews by author in "Ralph Hull: A Life in the Sawmill Business," manuscript for work in progress, pp. 68-78 and based on interviews by author in Dawson 2, 6 and 11 Feb. 1992; 29 April 1992; 6 May 1992; and 5, 7 Dec. 1994; all tape recordings. Also quoted in George Wisner, "Hull-Oakes Lumber Company's Steam Powered Sawmill: A Case Study in Industrial Archaeology" (Unpublished Master's thesis, Oregon State University, 1995), p. 38, further discussion pp. 87-91. Floyd Billings, sales manager for Hull-Oakes, in personal communication 2 July 1997 illustrated the profitability of the company's large-timber specialty business by economic example: The company bought timber for $750.00 a thousand board feet in June 1997; dimension lumber sold for $420.00 a thousand board feet, while the company's specialty products sold for up to $3,000.00 per thousand board feet. The term "board foot" is the standard measure in the lumber industry. It is a piece of wood of the nominal dimensions of 1" thick and 1'-0" square.


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commercial sawmilling possible, allowing it to reach full potential. 2 But most mills soon converted to electricity because it promised to centralize power in one electric generator while saving plant labor and maintenance costs associated with steam engines and their power transmission systems relying on intricate networks of belts, pulleys and shafts. Hull gradually converted 50 percent of his plant's machinery to electricity in the post World War II era when it became available. Cautious and frugal, Hull refused to fully embrace electricity because he believed it more costeffective to steam-power his heaviest and most powerdemanding large-log processing equipment, particularly when he could use free lumber-cutting wastes to fuel his steam plant and save thousands of dollars in monthly electric bills. 3 Because of that decision, the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. sawmill's continued reliance on steam was contrary to conventional wisdom tending toward full electrification and the use of computer and laser technologies to get the most lumber possible out of smaller-diameter logs while streamlining operating systems to reduce labor costs.

As his continued use of steam suggests, Hull has repeatedly and successfully bought used equipment and modified it to suit his purpose. He has hired qualified people to operate and maintain that often worn machinery rather than buying costly new machinery that bankrupted similar small and capital-lean mill owners when their markets went flat, or they were unable to get timber and repay debts related to upgrading their plants. 4 However, Hull quickly adopted new practices when profitable. In the late 1960s and early

2Alfred J. Van Tassel, with David w. Bluestone, Mechanization in the Lumber Industry (Philadelphia: Work Projects Administration, National Research Project, Report No. M-5, 1940), p. 8. Wisner, "Case Study, " p. 12 .

3Wisner, "Case Study," p. 106.

4 • Wisner, "Case Study," p. 106, for further discussion on Hull's

use of used machinery. Donald Oakes and Todd Nystrom, interviews by author, 4 June 1997, field notes.


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1970s, he installed more modern equipment necessary to capture a rising market for lumber-cutting by-products such as wood chips for the pulp and fiberboard industry, and bark chips for heat generation.

Timber quantity and characteristics have varied over time, forcing the sawmill to cut smaller logs with machinery designed for large logs. Cutting 35,000 board feet of lumber as a daily maximum at its start, the plant's maximum one-shift production level is 85,000 board feet -- a small sawmill when compared to large corporate mills cutting 200,000 or more board feet of lumber on one of several daily shifts. 5 In 1939, the company routinely cut trees that were forty inches in diameter at breast height, a common timber measuring height; today it scrambles to get trees that are twenty four inches in diameter, a minimum it claims is necessary to produce quality timbers. 6 As sales of federal timber upon which Hull-Oakes has largely relied for up to 90 percent of its long and large-diameter logs have dwindled, to pre-1942 levels in some forests, Hull-Oakes timber buyers have employed mixed strategies to obtain raw material elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Hull-Oakes loggers cut more deeply into 4,000 acres of company-owned timber -- reluctantly dipping into a timber bank that keeps the large-log processing operation going when other raw material sources are not available or are too expensive to buy. 7 Despite industry boom and bust cycles and changes in timber supplies, Hull-Oakes continues its creative reliance on large and antiquated machinery designed to cut the more abundant large Douglas firs of bygone decades. That machinery still effectively cuts large timbers used as bridge stringers, beams for gold dredges and

5Nelson c. Brown, Lumber, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1947), p.13. Also Hull, "Ralph Hull: A Life," p.68.

6Floyd Billings, interview by author, 4 June 1997, field notes.

7Donald Oakes, Todd Nystrom, interviews by author, 4, 17 June 1997, field notes.


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other heavy construction, and lumber for historic restoration projects such as deck planking for restoration of the U.S.S. Constitution.

Despite profound change in the Pacific Northwest timber industry precipitated by the depletion of reserves of largediameter old-growth timber and the application of laborsaving computer and laser technologies, the family-owned sawmill continues Ralph Hull's primary mission of specializing in long and large-diameter timbers. As an industry anachronism, the mill cuts specialty products with obsolete and labor-intensive machinery and practices more commonly identified with late nineteenth and early twentieth century sawmilling. Hull was company president in 1997, remaining a bottom-line decision maker at the age of 86. Despite continued use of obsolete technology -- and through tenacity, good business judgment and attrition of many of the region's smaller sawmills -- Hull has made the company a leader in filling a specialty niche in a competitive lumber market. Company officials list but four regional competitors for long and large timbers up to 40'-0" long; and the company stands alone as a supplier of specialty timbers longer than 40'-0", retaining the ability to routinely cut large timbers up to 85'-0" long on a single pass through its main timber-cutting saw.

A Guiding Philosophy The story of the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. directly reflects the life of Ralph Hull, the sawmill's surviving architect and engineer. Hull's Great Depression-era upbringing and experiences don't entirely explain his later personal and business decisions. But, they do illustrate how that guiding philosophy was realized by a man of modest means who frugally dictated the purchase and maintenance of used machinery and relied on steam power over paying large electric bills while steering the company over the past half-century. Hull's early ventures in sawmilling also show how he, and the overall Pacific Northwest timber industry, became dependent on the federal government to obtain largediameter timber -- the raw material necessary to sustain his enterprise. Born in a farm house a few miles north of

\


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Bellfountain, Oregon, on April 13, 1912 to William and Ethel Hull, Ralph Hull's early life in his goat, sheep and cattleraising family was set in a foundation of religion, thrift and hard-work. That ethic appears later in Hull's personal and business life where he demanded hard work of himself and his employees who he believed should receive no money unless they worked for it. According to Hull, his father worked hard and "always taught me that work was one of the first things he believed in. I done a lot of work while I was growing up." 8 Hull quickly learned the value of money and saving what he earned from farm and other chores. These values produced a financially cautious man who spurned frivolous spending, a man not known for hasty decisions who studied for weeks or months before buying sawmill machinery (often used), and repaired sawmill buildings only when absolutely necessary. Industrious throughout his youth, Hull had saved enough money to make a down-payment on a ranch while still in high school. But showing an independent streak, Hull went against his father's desires to see him become a rancher and decided instead to pursue sawmilling as a career because "it was much faster than farming. You were making lumber and selling it. You didn't have to wait a year for a crop to come in and that appealed to me. " 9

By 1934, the Great Depression was in full swing throughout the nation. With about half the sawmills in Oregon and Washington shut down, and more sawmills in Benton County closed than open, Hull jumped into the lumber business with youthful enthusiasm and a belief that the economic picture would brighten. Writing a contract on the back of a $5.00 check, he leased a depression-idled steam-powered sawmill in the winter of 1934 -- hauling logs to his mill by horse and sled, and paying workers 35 cents an hour. Company records

8wisner, "Case Study," pp. 27-31 for discussion of Hull's upbringing. Also, Hull, "Ralph Hull: A Life," pp. 1-41 provides more complete oral history discussion of his early life and family.

9Hull, "Ralph Hull: A Life," p. 45. Also Wisner, "Case Study," pp. 31-41 for more details on Hull's first lumber business ventures.


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show Hull's first order for lumber came Feb. 15, 1935. Subsequent orders were slim, but his timing was good and conditions improved somewhat due to labor problems in large sawmills along the Columbia River that idled thousands of mill workers and provided small Willamette Valley mills such as Hull's with orders II for cheap plank. 1110 When his sixmonth lease expired, Hull leased an electric-powered mill in neighboring Monroe, benefitting from the "New Deal" government by cutting lumber to build Civilian Conservation Corps camps being set up during the 1930s throughout the region, and extensively in California. 11

Hull quickly began an operational pattern continuing through the years -- relying on federal timber to fill his orders. At the outset those supplies included timber from Oregon and California timber lands administered by the Bureau of Public Lands, timber purchased by Hull's uncle, Wes Miller, and sold to him for $1.00 a thousand board feet. 12

Hull continued buying federal timber when the Bureau of Public Lands became the Bureau of Land Management in 1946, steadily relying on that timber when the federal government

10wisner, "Case Study," pp. 32-35. Also Robert E. Ficken, The Forested Land: A History of Lumbering in Western Washington (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1987), pp. 210-211.

11Wisner, "Case Study," p. 35. Also Carlos A. Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1989), pp. 302-309. For region's lumber industry in the Great Depression, see William G. Robbins, Hard Times in Paradise (Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 1988), pp. 85-87. Also Jonathan Dembo, "The Pacific Northwest Lumber Industry During the Great Depression," Journal of the West, Vol. 24, 1985, pp. 53-55.

12Hull, "Ralph Hull: A Life," p. 56; also cited in Wisner, "Case Study," p. 35. Oregon and California timber was part of a 1916 deal in which the federal government acquired timberland owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Coos Bay Wagon Road on the basis that they had not complied with provisions of an 1866 land grant. The land was then sold for logging and lumber, a policy unique to the Pacific Northwest. Also Ficken, Forested Land, pp. 41-3, for discussion of early and continued relationship between lumber and government in the Pacific Northwest.


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escalated its timber sales around 1942. Meanwhile, Hull followed the lead of other successful Pacific Northwest lumber entrepreneurs and bought private timberland, prudently providing a timber bank of more than 15,000 acres upon which to draw when necessary. 13

Although his Monroe mill burned down after four months, Hull soon opened another one, which he built with tight funds and powered by a used steam-powered farm tractor engine he converted to sawmill use. After operating through 1936 and 1937, fire again burned Hull out, leaving him little cash but a large inventory of lumber to bankroll his next venture -- building his present mill at Dawson after fire there destroyed most of the one owned by his uncle, who's siren song of lumbering's benefits had earlier pulled Hull into the business. Working with W.J. Miller's cousin, Clarence Miller, who owned a companion mill on the site, to cut railroad items such as bridge stringers and railroad ties, and cutting construction lumber he needed by leasing another small sawmill, Hull returned to business to fulfill a mission originally envisioned by W.J. Miller -- cutting long and large timbers. 14 Being practical, Hull incorporated used boilers and machinery left from the W.J. Miller sawmill fire into his plans. Following a well-established lifestyle of frugality, Hull bought used machinery, financed the venture on a shoestring of limited cash and credit and cobbled everything together into a basic sawmill built with wood that was, at the time, plentiful and cheap. In 1996, Hull owned a plant the Benton County Assessor valued at about $1 million, and which company officials say would not

13wisner, "Case Study," pp. 35-36. Joan Mary Kelley, "The History of the Lumber Industry in Oregon's Douglas Fir Region: An examination of Historic Architecture in Five Mill Towns," (Unpublished Master's thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene, 1992), p. 36, notes that federal and state land policies allowing public land to be transferred to private ownership gave the Pacific Northwest a distinct lumber history, resulted in a few companies owning vast tracts of land, and created towns and rural villages entirely dependent on the lumber industry.

14Wisner, "Case Study," pp. 37-39.


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be cost-effective to modernize, particularly while making money in its present condition. 15

Once operating, Hull both relied on his federal timber source whenever possible and looking to the future kept buying his own timber, some of it at tax-delinquent prices -- a common business strategy followed by many of the region's timber barons. 16 Securing a small personal loan from a local bank to finance start-up costs, he relied on lumber inventory sales to keep operating or to cope with unexpected problems such as fires or machinery breakdowns that could have put less-frugal, debt-shackled and illprepared mill owners out of business. In all but constant relocation, Hull operated like other small independent sawmill operators of the time -- with tight finances, family help, minimal capital improvements, and constant scrambling for timber to make and sell lumber to stay one jump ahead of his bills. 17 But unlike some independent sawmill operators, the hedge he built against the unexpected by buying inexpensive timberland gave the sawmill a stable raw material source when others were unavailable -- a strategy corporate giants such as Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific long used on a grand scale. Managing to hang on during the Depression, Hull profited through the World War II era selling lumber and long timbers for government troop training facilities and other construction projects in California. 18 Wartime lumber demand was so great it

15Donald Oakes, interview by author, 25 June 1997, field notes. For description of the plant's steam plant, major buildings and structures see Appendix.

16Hull, "Ralph Hull: A Life," pp. 78-80, 88. Jim Fisher, Starker Forests: The Legacy of T.J. Starker (Bend Oregon Color Press, 1991), p. 45.

17see Robins, Hard Times, pp. 110-17, for plight of the small sawmill operators.

18Wayne Giesy, personal interview by author, 30 June 1997, field notes. Also Ellis Lucia, Head Rig: Story of the West Coast Lumber Industry (Portland, Ore., Overland West Press, 1965), pp. 208-217 for details of America's wartime lumber needs. Stanley F. Horn, This


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prompted U.S. Forest Service chief William Greeley in early 1943 to write that "The war has so thoroughly absorbed all the energies of the West Coast lumber industry that for practical purposes we are part of the Armed Services. " 19

Hull's prosperity continued into the subsequent peacetime economy that fueled an industry-wide boom -- a period where Oregon's lumber output reached a record of 9.8 billion board feet in 1952 alone. 20 By the late 1960s, Hull-Oakes and many of the region's other sawmills had grown accustomed to buying large trees from federal forests -- sales that began escalating in 1942 and after World War II were demanded by a timber-hungry industry and consuming public, rapidly liquidating private timber stocks to meet post-war markets . 21

Locally, that reliance on federal timber resulted in the 1973 harvest of a record 945 million board feet from the area's 1.7-million acre Willamette National Forest. Following adoption of the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994, federal timber sales plummeted, dropping on the Willamette to 56 million board feet in 1996, well below the 500 million to 700 million board feet timber companies had become used to harvesting to feed their sawmills during peak years. 22

Looked at another way, Hull-Oakes was among timber companies buying 55 percent of their timber from federal sources in

Fascinating Lumber Business (Indianapolis and New York: The BobbsMerrill Company, 1943), p.223, notes that by the end of 1941, the war effort had consumed 24 billion board feet of lumber, about 73 percent of the year's total production.

19Ficken, Forested Land, p. 224.

20H. Mike Miller, Forests. People and Oregon A History of Forestry in Oregon (Salem, Oregon State Forestry Department, 1982), p. 26.

21Robbins, Hard Times, pp. 122-137, for discussion of private industry timber drain and increase in reliance on federal timber supplies by the timber industry that was cutting at an ever-increasing rate.

22Patti Rodgers, interview by author, 25 June 1997, field notes.


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1968, and part of an industry that by 1994 purchased only 18 percent from those sources. 23 As Hull-Oakes part-owner and General Manager Donald Oakes put it:

"We have used in our mill 80 to 90 percent on average of federal timber from 1939 to 1990. We manage our own forestland and annually harvest blowdowns and some other volume for good silviculture practices. Since 1990 as federal log supplies shortened, we developed a strategy to purchase 25 to 30 percent or more of our log supply from private landowners, and attempting to work with the government to purchase the balance of logs required." 24

But the present shortage of large trees has forced the company to turn down some job orders because it can't get the trees to fill them. Hull's decision to stay with old machinery designed specifically to cut the large trees continues to require the sawmill to trade its smaller logs for larger ones that dimension mills are unable to cut. As always the mill might cut several logs to find one suitable for an unblemished, high-grade and high-premium product.

The problem experienced by Hull-Oakes is not unique, as depleted private holdings and a waiting period for timber regrowth forced the entire Pacific Northwest timber industry to rely more heavily on federal timber. But the practice became expensive as timber prices jumped from about $5.00 a thousand board feet in 1944 to more than $200.00 by 1977, ending the heyday of cheap timber and lumber. 25

23Statistical Yearbook for 1970 (Western Wood Products Association, Portland, Ore.), p.7. Statistical Yearbook for 1995 (Western Wood Products Association, Portland, Ore.), p. 7. This publication gives a broad range of excellent statistics on the Pacific Northwest timber industry.

24Donald Oakes, interview by author, 17 June 1997, field notes.



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Despite such growing complexities of doing business, Hull remains firmly in control of the company -- one to whom his business partners quickly defer for crucial decisions. Ralph Hull sold the company in 1946 to his brother, Homer, remaining until 1951 as its operational manager before leaving until about 1954 to pursue other business ventures -- when he felt the mill was running smoothly. While Ralph Hull returned to oversee installation of the plant's band saw in 1955, it was Homer Hull who, after consultation with Ralph and Hubert K. McBee, began the upgrading process three years earlier when he bought a larger and more reliable steam engine for the plant. Installing the band saw and the steam engine were both major improvements increasing plant production, while firmly stating the company's decision to stick with old fashioned steam power regardless of the direction other mills were taking to electrify their plants and retool for changing times and conditions. When Hull reformed the company with Chester Oakes as partner in 1955, he returned to his primary strength -- controlling sawmill operations while Oakes ran the company's timber-cutting program. 26

The company's ability to survive at all in an era where the region's sawmills are rapidly closing testifies to Hull's adaptability and business acumen within a shrinking industry dominated by large and well-financed corporations. The company keeps operating by trading with other companies for large and long logs they can not cut, and buying from timber farmers who don't own sawmills but sell from inventory.

The company also cuts more of its timber bank of private trees -- a short-run strategy it desperately tries to avoid. Meanwhile, the company's payroll impact on south Benton County shrinks as more mills close, population increases and industrial diversity reduces the timber industry's economic

26Donald Oakes, personal communication with author, 27 June 1997, field notes. Chester Oakes died in 1983, Homer Hull in 1985.


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importance to the region. 27 Throughout its history, the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. has weathered cycles of prosperity and depression common to the industry. During the down swing of the 1980s, when many mill owners whined about high business costs and laid off workers or shut their mills, Hull slowed production and kept his non-union plant running for about three years without turning a profit, (perhaps at loss) . 28

Hull said he kept the mill operating without a shutdown on the principle that it's best:

To make a little bit of lumber every day. That way, we didn't have to shut down. Besides, it takes time and costs money to shut down a plant and restart it. And I always figured the value of keeping a crew satisfied and happy was worth something. 29

Sudden drops in federal timber prices during the 1980s left Hull and other operators holding timber too expensive to cut -- timber they were later able to turn back to the government to curb serious losses. "Times were really tough there for awhile," Donald Oakes said, recalling that the company bought 9.5 million board feet from the U.S. Forest Service in 1981 for $462.00 a thousand board feet only to see sales drop to where they were buying 11.3 million board feet from the Bureau of Land Management at $100.00 a thousand board feet in 1986. At the same time, interest rates soared and the lumber market was depressed -combinations driving many small and marginally-financed

270regon Employment Division statistics show Hull's employees were among 13,900 people working in Oregon sawmills during 1996, a significant drop from the 21,500 reported in 1990. At the same time, the state's overall labor pool has risen to 1.7 million in 1996 from 1.4 million in 1990. Sawmill payroll records show thirty employees at Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. sawmill in 1938, compared with fifty-two in 1997, including forty-six full-time sawmill production jobs and support personnel.

28Phil Kundert, interviews by author, 2 July 1997, field notes.

29Hull, "Ralph Hull: A Life, 11 p. 84.


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sawmills with similar, or newer, machinery out of business. 30

Hull's decision to specialize and retain outdated equipment has certainly helped him survive. But he couldn't operate that labor intensive equipment without a dedicated crew of specially skilled employees willing to work under noisy conditions, and with pay and benefits below those of large union-shop mills, to produce the company's lumber products. Synchronous teamwork, personal initiative, judgment and specialized mechanical skills are required throughout the company's lumber production process. Following Hull's personal philosophy that people shouldn't get paid when they don't work, Hull-Oakes doesn't give employees paid vacations or paid holidays, and the company doesn't offer a pension plan. But employees can get more money by working extra hours. The company's limited benefits have sometimes made it difficult in recent years to hire and keep the skilled employees necessary to properly and swiftly maintain and operate his antiquated steam machinery and equipment. 31

To offset the lack of some benefits, mill workers, often treated as family, are given considerable freedom within the plant, and a corps of older and more experienced employees trains newer employees to work a variety of jobs and participate in production from beginning to end. It is an industrial operations style some critics might label self-serving and paternalistic, and others conducting business as if its employees mattered. Also, Mr. Hull gives a safety-production bonus in addition to a bonus at Christmas for years employed. Mr. Hull has helped his men over the years get through difficult personal financial situations. 32

30nonald Oakes, interview by author, 2 July 1997, field notes.

31Phil Kundert, interview by author, 2 July 1997, field notes.

32 Ibid. Sometimes Hull would distribute bags of corn to his employees when his home garden was particularly productive, and employees also have considerable leeway in receiving time off for personal problems. Also see E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (London: Blond & Briggs Ltd., 1973; New York: Harper & Row, Publishers,


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While successfully dictating the company's direction, Hull also has made decisions more educational than profitable. He lost about $1 million when he left the sawmill briefly in the 1950s to speculate in northern California timber -propelling him back to Oregon to drive truck for his brother before buying back into the sawmill where he felt secure, an experience other employees say taught him a lesson about sticking with what he knew. 33

Historic and Technological Context Firing its boilers late in the era of the Great Depression, the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. followed in the tradition of an industry stretching back to pioneer America, when an estimated 50 percent of the nation was forested. "Today, about 730 million acres of forest remains, or [about] twothirds of the original forest area [in 1600]. This is 32 percent of the total land area of the U.S." 34

Although scholars disagree about exactly when and where in the seventeenth century sawmilling began in America, most authorities agree with W.B. Greeley that sawmills were regarded as vital pioneer village institutions that often

1989), pp. 237-55 for discussion on appropriate technology and benefits of freedom and dignity in work environment.

33Hull, "Ralph Hull: A Life," pp. 88-89. Also Phil Kundert, interview by author, 2 July 1997, field notes.

34Edmond S. Meany, Jr., "The History of the Lumber Industry in the Pacific Northwest to 1917" (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1935), pp. 1-9. William G. Robbins, Lumberjacks and Legislators: Political Economy of the U.S. Lumber Industry. 1890-1941 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982), pp. 3-4. For further discussion of lumber history see Kelley, "Lumber Industry," pp. 11-29. Also Wisner, "Case Study," pp. 9-10. MacCleery, Douglas w., Condition and Trends of U.S. Forests A Brief Overview. A position paper for the USDA/Forest Service, 1991. Also a pie chart, U.S. Forests As Percent of U.S. Land Area 1600-1990, RPA Technical Report RM-175, 1989.


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preceded most town buildings. 35 Described by historian Thomas R. Cox as "civilization's pioneer machine" that operated before other businesses such as saloons, general stores and schools, sawmills enabled settlers to abandon the crude comforts of dirt-floored homes for the more refined pleasures of a wood-floored frame house. 36

The production history for the national lumber industry reflects that of regional industries, with sawmill centers developing in turn and declining when area timber supplies ran out. In the census of 1840, New York ranked first with 6,356 sawmills, and Pennsylvania second with 5,389 mills -a ranking reversed by 1860 when Pennsylvania took the lead during a year in which the nation's total lumber production exceeded 8 billion board feet. By 1890, Michigan had become the industry leader, remaining so until about 1910, when the woods of the southeast yielded 44.8 percent of the nation's total production that year of 44.5 billion board feet. Large corporate giants led by men such as Frederick Weyerhaeuser, who made a fortune in the forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota following the Civil War, dominated the early industry and carried that dominance to the Pacific Northwest after 1900. 37 As it moved west, sawmilling activity eventually centered in the Pacific Northwest where the country's largest stands of big trees remain. By 1960, most of the nation's forestland was in the South and East; most of the salable timber was in the West. 38

35w.B. Greeley, "The Westward Ho of the Sawmill," Sunset (June, 1923), pp. 56-7, 96-100. Wisner, "Case Study," p. 9.

36Thomas R. Cox, et al., This Well-Wooded Land. Americans and Their Forests From Colonial Times to the Present (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1985), p. 65.

37Horn, Lumber Business. pp. 23-33. Also Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest, pp.178-81 for discussion of move westward of timber industry's corporate giants.

38Cox, Well-Wooded, pp. 246-47. On progression of timber harvesting westward, Wisner, "Case Study," pp. 9-15.


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Steam-powered sawmilling, emerging in America in the early 1800s, rapidly replaced hand and water-powered sawmills, the hallmark of early sawmilling. Steam power, along with a rapid transformation in speed and configuration of saws and log-handling mechanical systems, helped deplete the white pine stands of the northeast pushed the Great Lakes pineries through their heyday from 1850 to 1900, and enabled the southern pineries to see a peak production of 16 billion board feet in 1909. 39 By 1900, steam sawmills dominated the Pacific Northwest's Douglas fir region.

The rich timber region of the Pacific Northwest stretches from Canada south through Washington, Oregon and northern California -- habitat of the region's dominant tree species Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii. Mixed with this species in lesser numbers are Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), red cedar (Thuja plicata), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), and Port Orford cedar (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana). In Oregon and Washington, the region is about 150 miles wide and 480 miles long -- part of a total 35 million acres regarded in the 1940s the nation's last reserve (excluding Alaska) of old growth saw timber containing a relatively small number of trees that may have ranged from 450 to 750 years old, an age range subject to debate by some present-day authorities. 4° Characterized by a wet and mild climate, the region is blanketed with Douglas firs described by their namesake, botanist David Douglas, as numerous and extremely large -- giants approaching 600 years old and as much as 300' tall and 10' in diameter. 41

39Greeley, "Westward," pp. 57-58. See Carolyn C. Cooper, "A Patent Transformation: Woodworking Mechanization in Philadelphia," in Early American Technology: Making and Doing Things from the Colonial Era to 1850, ed. Judith A. McGaw (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994) pp. 278-85 for discussion of early steam sawmilling in America.

40Jensen, Edward. Trees to know in Oregon. Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Extension Service, Department of Forestry, 1995.

41Ibid., pp. 68-9. Also, Horn cites Meriwether Lewis as finding these firs in his 1804 journey of exploration with William Clark to be


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The size of those trees largely dictated the size and type of machinery to handle and cut them. Specialized larger and more ruggedly built machinery such as saws, steam engines and carriages to move logs through stationary saws were quickly developed along with the emerging industry by wellestablished Great Lakes companies such as Filer & Stowell of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Ames Iron Works in upstate New York. With many logs weighing up to five tons, mills in the region -- including Hull's mill -- were built of heavy timbers, were wide, long and equipped with large, heavy machines designed to sustain stresses created by the larger logs. 42 With its brute force, steam power proved effective in transforming those giant trees into lumber -- in the region's earlier mills and for the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. In 1869, for example, steam powered 51 percent of the nation's sawmills, with water wheels and turbines accounting for the other 49 percent; by 1909, steam accounted for 90 percent of the power in America's sawmills. 43 Steam power was equally important to sawmill development in the Pacific Northwest.

Historians differ but slightly on when the Pacific Northwest's first sawmill was built. Most agree that it was built in about 1827-28 when George Simpson, field governor of the Hudson's Bay Co. in North America, ordered company factor John McLaughlin to build a mill at Fort Vancouver to better use the country's natural resources and head off American competition. 44 Although sawmilling there was

of "Immense size" and girth, with one tree measured at 44'-0" in circumference, pp. 68-9.

42David Douglas, Journal Kept by David Douglas During His Travels in North America, 1823-1827 (London: William Wesley, and the Royal Horticulture Society, 1914), p. 120. H.B. Oakleaf, Lumber Manufacture in the Douglas Fir Region (Chicago: Commercial Journal Co., Inc., 1920), pp. 3-5. Also Kelley, "History," pp. 13-23; Wisner, "Case Study," p.10.

43Van Tassel, Mechanization, p. 8. Wisner, "Case Study," pp. 11-12.



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limited and on an extremely small scale, it was a harbinger of the industry to come.

When the great migration to the Oregon Territory began in the 1840s, sawmills were among the first industries to support that settlement. Methodist missionaries operated the Island Mill Company sawmill in 1842 at Oregon City, and two years later a water-powered sawmill built by Henry Hunt and Tallmadge Wood on a bluff on the south side of the Columbia River at Cathlamet Head was sawing lumber for Oregon City markets; by 1850, steam-driven sawmills operated near Astoria and at Portland. 45 Commercial sawmilling underway in the Northwest quickly followed a pattern of technological innovation and evolution earlier experienced by its predecessors around the Great Lakes, the North East and South.

California money, New England and Great Lakes lumbermen and water transportation dominated the region's fledgling lumber industry of the 1800s -- an industry spurred by the gold rush and its subsequent lumber demand. Referred to as the "Cargo Era," it was an period of intense steam-powered sawmilling where sailing ships carried export lumber, or cargo, to ports such as San Francisco from large and small sawmills all along the Pacific Coast. Such a cargo trade also existed on a more limited basis along the lower Columbia River and in the Coos Bay area of southern Oregon, which had an active lumber trade with California, and readily accessible stands of Douglas fir and cedar growing right down to the coast. That trend continued until the business shifted inland about 1880 when large, capital-rich, companies with well-equipped steam mills set up in areas such as Coos Bay and Tillamook to access and cut the logs, leaving smaller mills operating in their shadows. Many small mills logged over their holdings and couldn't stay competitive, while others consolidated and sought investors

45Ficken, Forested Land, pp. 19-22. Study, 11 p. 15; also in Kelley, "History, 11

Also cited in Wisner, "Case p. 31.


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from the East and Midwest to finance newer lumber-cutting technology. 46

Washington's lumber industry growth paced Oregon's, with Swedish immigrant Nicholas Delin building a sawmill on the site of Tacoma in 1852. That same year, Henry Yesler developed a steam-powered sawmill at the Puget Sound city of Seattle, beginning a process eventually making that city a major regional cargo center with more than a dozen operating steam-powered lumber mills. Corporate giants such as Frederick Pope & William Talbot of Maine, and Frederick Weyerhaeuser, who brought his lumber-producing empire west from Minnesota after that region's timber supplies were depleted, helped finance the new industry. As part of his rise to timber dominance in the Pacific Northwest, Weyerhaeuser presided over one of the largest land transfers in American history, buying ninety thousand acres of mostly Douglas fir forest at six dollars an acre from a long-time Minnesota friend and neighbor, railroad magnate James J. Hill. Through the Timber and Stone Act of 1878, other large companies acquired vast acreages of cheap timber upon which they built their empires. With smaller sawmills operating in their shadows, these corporations opened a region that, by 1920, had become the nation's leader in lumber, producing 10 billion board feet that year. By the 1930s, more than sixty lumber companies had business offices in downtown Portland, Oregon, which also had become a railroad hub and regional base for the lumber industry. 47

46Robbins, Hard Times in Paradise, pp. 12-19. Also cited in Kelley, "History," pp. 19-20, 33-37 for discussion of large and small lumbering along the Oregon, Washington and California coast.

47cox et al. Well-Wooded, pp. 167, 193. Van Tassel, Mechanization, p. 8. Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest, p. 179. See Jean Mater, "Reinventing the Forest Industry," in Wood and Wood Products Centennial, 1896-1996 (Lincolnshire, Illinois: Vance Publishing Corp., 1996), pp. 116-124 for Timber and Stone Act discussion. On the development and use of steam power in sawmilling, Wisner, "Case Study," pp. 10-13. Kelley, "History, 11 p. 92.


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Sawmill development along Puget Sound in the decade before the Civil War differed from that developing in Oregon, larger and more heavily financed than Oregon's mills which often focused more on local markets. As a result, Washington rose to early dominance in Pacific Northwest lumbering, strongly linked to San Francisco trade by Seattle's seaport. By 1896, Harry McCormick had erected a major sawmill in the Puget Sound area -- carrying on a family tradition of a century earlier when his grandfather built Pennsylvania's first sawmill at Stone Valley in Center County. As eastern forests dwindled in importance late in the nineteenth century, their large and well-financed lumbermen moved to the cedar and Douglas fir slopes of the Pacific Northwest. 48

Steam power quickly became a standard for the region's sawmills, with census reports showing two steam-powered mills in Oregon and Washington in 1850; twenty-seven by 1860; and seventy-seven in 1880. 49 By the early twentieth century, large, medium and small-sized steam-powered sawmills dominated the region. Mills used steam well into the 1970s when electric motors generally replaced the lengthy start-up aspects of steam systems, and their operators saw a rising market for sawmilling byproducts that once were burned as waste or used to fuel steam plants. But the early and continued popularity of steam is easily

48 Ficken, Forested Land, pp. 29-39. Also Horn, Lumber Business, for growth in Washington lumbering. Robbins, Hard Times, pp.18-25 for discussion of westward movement of large timber interests.

49Meany, "Lumber Industry," 1935, p. 304. It should be noted that Nathan Rosenberg, "America's Rise to Woodworking Leadership," in America's Wooden Age: Aspects of its Early Technology. ed. Brook Hindle, (New York: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1975) pp. 58-61, presented U.S. Census figures showing thirty-seven overall sawmills in Oregon recorded in 1850, with 126 reported for Oregon in 1860, and thirty-three in Washington. The book's tables don't isolate steam-powered mills, but do suggest an early trend for Pacific Northwest sawmill growth. There's also disagreement among historians over the importance of steam power in the early industrialization of America. See Louis C. Hunter, "Waterpower in the Century of the Steam Engine," in Wooden Age, pp. 160-90 for a discussion of that disagreement.


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explained: Unlike water-powered mills, steam-powered mills did not depend on swift-flowing streams and rivers to turn machinery. They operated in dry spells when streams were low, with their boilers fired by wood waste from the sawmilling process to produce cheap pressurized power to turn the largest of lumber-cutting machines. 50 With the coming of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1883, and the opening of eastern markets for western lumber, the industry grew dramatically, as did its dependence on steam. 51 In 1869, steam accounted for 51 percent of the power used in the Pacific Northwest's lumber industry; by 1904, steam drove more than 90 percent of America's sawmills, many of them in the Pacific Northwest. 52

Benton County, Oregon -- where Ralph Hull operated his first mill in 1934, and his present venture -- mirrored the sawmill growth and development occurring throughout the region by the start of the twentieth century. The strength and rigidity of Douglas fir contributed greatly to its popularity for early and continued use in heavy construction and infrastructure such as bridges. Although Willamette Valley sawmills floated logs along the Willamette River to Portland mills and for access to broader markets, many sawmills provided lumber primarily for a local market that had become well entrenched by the 1920s when the industry became a major part of the region's economy. Approximately 63 percent of the wage earners in Oregon and Washington depended directly upon the forest products industry in 1910,

50cox et al., Well-Wooded, p. 67. Wisner, "Case Study," pp. 9-12

51Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest, p. 177 for discussion of how Pacific Northwest sawmills helped build the railway while profiting from it in local markets producing ties, bridge timbers, and building materials for railroad stations and other trackside structures. Also Kelley, "History," p. 41, discusses the importance of railroad tie manufacture to area sawmills.

52See Van Tassel, Mechanization, p. 8. Also Wisner, "Case Study, 11

pp. 10-13.


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dropping to 50 percent by 1928 as the population and other industries grew. 53

Beginning in 1852, small Benton County sawmills such as the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. began producing lumber for use locally, for people settling along streams on the east side of the Oregon Coast Range. Lorenzo Gilbert reportedly built the county's first sawmill, a man-powered mill along Muddy Creek about 1.2 miles south of Alpine, about six miles from the Hull-Oakes sawmill site. The first among several early mills to settle in the county, it supplied lumber for local houses and outbuildings. Other early mills also settled along watercourses, which aided a transition to water power through specially-designed mill races. 54

Railroad systems tying Oregon's Willamette Valley to regional and national markets early in the twentieth century also spurred development of the area's sawmill industry. 55

The completion of a railroad from San Francisco to Portland by 1882, gave the county's sawmills a direct overland route to a large market; and by 1884 a railroad from the county seat in Corvallis, Oregon, to Yaquina Bay provided the mills a direct route to the Oregon Coast and access to cargobearing ships. 56 Although the railroads provided an expanded market, and the number of sawmills increased quickly, the county's lumber industry evolved a pattern of smaller mills with a relatively low production. By 1890, nine lumber mills operated in Benton County, five of which were steam powered with a combined production capacity of 23 million board feet; that number jumped to forty by 1936 and to fifty-nine in 1947; by the 1950s the industry for the

53Meany, "Lumber Industry, 11 p. 309. Kelley, "History, 11 p. 36.

54Michelle Dennis and Liz Carter, Benton County. Oregon Historic Context Statement 1846-1945 (Corvallis, Ore., Benton County Development Department, November, 1996), p. 31.

55Kelley, "History," pp. 15, 17-19, 92-100.

56Franklin Russell Longwood, "A Land Use History of Benton County, Oregon," (Unpublished Master's thesis, Oregon State College, Corvallis, Oregon, 1940), pp. 47-50.


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first time exceeded 1929 lumber production levels. 57

Sawmills also settled in the narrow south Benton County creek valley that became known as Dawson (the future site of Hull-Oakes Lumber Co.) shortly after a rail line from the main Willamette Valley line arrived there in 1909-10. Built by the Corvallis and Alsea River Railway as part of an aborted scheme to provide transportation from the Willamette Valley to the Oregon Coast, the line was sold to the Portland, Eugene and Eastern Railway in 1911. Southern Pacific bought the line in 1915, operating it until 1993 when the Willamette and Pacific Railroad in Albany, Oregon, leased the line, preventing Southern Pacific from shutting it down as too expensive to profitably maintain. The line never went beyond Dawson, and served area farmers as well as lumber and logging operations settling around its terminus. 58

Lumber mills have operated on the Hull-Oakes site since the World War I era. Benton County tax records show that Fred Malcolm operated a small sawmill at Dawson in 1914. Although likely he used the railroad to transport his products, details as to the mill's size, buildings, machinery, and operating methods are unclear. W.J. Miller leased the sawmill from him in 1920. Miller built a general purpose, steam-powered Douglas fir sawmill on the site in 1922, which he operated until 1936 when fire destroyed most of the mill and put about ninety people out of work. Miller, like Hull who followed him, relied on the railroad for product transportation. 59 Ralph Hull bought equipment

57Longwood, "Land Use History," p. 69. Lumberman's Handbook and Directory of the Western Forest Industry (Seattle: Miller Freeman Publications, 1956 edition), pp. 90-211. West Coast Lumberman's Association Statistical Handbook, 1925-62 (Portland, Ore), appendices for statistical overview by selected years.

58Ed Austin and Tom Dill, The Southern Pacific in Oregon (Edmonds, Wash., Pacific Fast Mail, 1987), p.181. See Wisner, "Case Study, 11 pp. 60-1 for railroad's importance to south Benton County.

59Hull, "Ralph Hull: A Life," p. 63. Also see "Miller Lumber Mill is Burned," Corvallis Gazette-Times, 11 June 1936, 1.


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and buildings surviving that fire and built the Ralph Hull Lumber Co. (Hull-Oakes Lumber Co.) to once again enter a Great Depression-wracked industry highly sensitive to business cycles of migrating capital, overproduction, rapidly fluctuating lumber prices and boom-bust periods for workers.

But the slump in 1929 was so hard that by the end of 1931 about half those normally employed in the mills and forests of Washington and Oregon were unemployed. 60 Despite hard times, Hull recalls that "Everywhere you looked in these canyons there was timber and sawmills. " 61 The largest to hit the Pacific Northwest timber industry since occurred during the 1970s and early 1980s when "high interest rates caused the home building industry slump" and environmental pressures cut off cheap supplies of federal timber previously available to sawmill owners, producing "a great rash of mill closures. "62 Tightening the corporate belt, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. weathered the depressions, leaving it in 1996 as one of six sawmills left operating in Benton County -- the only one powered by steam. Taken as a region, the states of Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and Montana have lost 212 sawmills since 1989, leaving 285 still operating. 63 Most remaining sawmills by that time had installed chippers and other machines to capture the sawdust and slabwood for sale to manufacturers of products such as particle board, which emerged as a major new

6°Ficken, Forested Land. 1987, p. 188.

61Hull, "Ralph Hull: A Life, " p. 67.

62William G. Robbins, "Labor in the Pacific Slope Timber Industry: A Twentieth-Century Perspective," Journal of the West, Vol. 25, 1986, pp. 8-13. Dembo, pp. 51-62.

63Paul F. Ehinger, forest industry consultant, interview by author, Eugene, Ore., 3 June 1997, field notes, with manuscript provided by Ehinger. The manuscript was his presentation as part of position papers on northwest forest issues given in April, 1993 at President Bill Clinton's Northwest Timber Planning Conference in Portland, Oregon.


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industry in 1951, and log debarkers developed in the 1950s to capture bark for heat generation market.

Throughout its history of westward movement, the timber industry developed major innovations from hand-power through water and steam power to electric motors, computers and lasers. As is common to this industry, sawmill operators did not embrace new machinery and practices overnight. Methods and technology frequently overlapped across the spectrum, with independently-owned, medium-sized, mills usually leading installation of new machines often designed to pare labor costs as much as improve production. Smaller and medium-sized sawmills -- including the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. -- often relied on several different generations of technology within their plants, frequently upgrading with less-expensive used equipment rather than saddling themselves with long-term debt to buy the latest technology. Early techniques of hand-powered pit saws used in the beginning of the industry from the Northeast to the Pacific Northwest rapidly gave way to water power to operate early up-and-down sash and rnuley saws. By 1792, water-power turned circular saws manufactured in the United States after being patented in 1777 in England. Stearn engines drove circular saws by 1828, and by 1870 they powered band saws long after Englishman, William Newbury patented the band saw in 1808. Band saws remain as today's primary lumber-cutting machine. Band saw blades are placed on two wheels, one above the cutting field and the other below it, like two pulleys. The lower wheel is the heavier wheel and generally acts as a flywheel to maintain cutting inertia. Some band mills, particularly in the Douglas fir region, used blades up to 12' in diameter by 1910. But it took until the late nineteenth century to develop a practical large-log band saw because good, flexible steel capable of withstanding the stresses induced by the blade traveling around the wheel had not been invented when the machine was patented. 64 Coupled

64Chandler Jones, "WOODWORKING: 100 Years of Evolution, The Technology," in Wood and Wood Products, pp. 347-8 for discussion of band saw evolution. Jones also notes that early saw filers refused to make their blade maintenance skills known, slowing band saw development until


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to steam engines, band saws, with their higher speeds and narrower kerfs, dramatically boosted lumber production from 8,000 board feet a day with water power to more than 100,000 board feet daily with steam. Steam power set the industry standard until about 1904 when mills slowly converted to electricity to simplify operating systems and reduce manpower. It was not uncommon in the Pacific Northwest to see smaller sawmills using electricity and steam to power their machines well into the 1970s, when it became evident that in the future, lumber would be cut from smallerdiameter trees. 65 After decades of refining lumber-cutting machinery and power systems developed in the early and mid-1800s, the industry started in 1946 yet another period of technological innovation, largely through improvements in electrical components and systems produced and field tested during World War II.

Durable electrical switching mechanisms, heavy-duty motors and hydraulic drives (used for anti-aircraft gun systems) led private industry to create remote controlled log carriages and log turners that, by 1954, were used by sawmills across the nation. These carriages allowed sawmill head sawyers total remote control of machinery to place, turn and move logs through primary lumber-cutting saws safely and evenly without using more hazardous and often unpredictable steam power, and lengthy cables or belts common to most mills of the time. The new systems also eliminated the need for a worker to ride aboard the carriage to help perform lumber-cutting chores, thus reducing plant

the opportunity to reduce kerf spurred development of a practical, easy to maintain blade.

65The preceding discussion of the evolution of early sawmill practices summarizes Wisner, "Case Study, p. 16-24. Cox, et al., WellWooded, p. 64. Ralph W. Andrews, This Was Sawmilling (Atglen, Pa., Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 1994), p. 44. Anmarie Medin, "A Research Design for Determining Legal Significance of Logging Related Historic Properties in Jackson Demonstration State Forest, (Unpublished Master's thesis, Rohnert Park, Calif., Sonoma State University, 1994), p. 52. Van Tassel, Mechanization, 1940, p. 8. Meany, "Lumber Industry," 1935, p. 309.


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payroll costs. By the mid-1950s, automated systems facilitated lumber handling, within a decade, increasing production industry-wide, eliminating jobs and reducing company payroll costs by allowing machines to be controlled by other machines rather than people. Photo-electric systems allowing remote handling of logs from log ponds to sawing floors were commonplace by 1956. Independently owned, medium-sized sawmills -- not corporate giants such as Weyerhaeuser -- led the way in buying and testing these emerging systems. Although the western states are seen as the cradle of invention for these new systems, the larger corporate sawmills of the 1950s generally didn't install them until proven elsewhere, according to Jean Mater, vicepresident of the forest products marketing services division of Mater Engineering in Corvallis, Oregon. The company, initially operating as Mater Machine Works, Inc., developed and sold many of the early automated carriages and lumberhandling systems, partly out of concern for worker safety. 66

The industry's technology jumped forward again with the slump of the 1980s deepened. This time, large electricallypowered corporate sawmills quickly put newly developed microcomputer technology to work, further refining sawmill automation and streamlining their plants to cut operation costs. Large companies quickly embraced production line computerization as a familiar extension of their usually already computerized business offices. 67

But automation of its carriage and computerization of sawing and lumber handling operations were not technologies that Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. believed it wanted or could afford, and refused to use. However, the company did add new equipment to improve production and tap emerging markets,

66Jean Mater, interview by author, 29 July 1997, field notes. Mater notes that it wasn't uncommon in the somewhat dangerous steampowered sawmills of the 1940s and 1950s to see lumber workers missing one or more fingers, which prompted her husband and business partner, Milton Mater, to say "there must be a better way" of doing things within the industry and spurred him to develop automated sawmill systems.

67 rbid.


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most notably a band saw in 1955, an expanded lumber trimming system in 1959, and a debarker and bark processing equipment in 1970. As the Northwest timber industry retooled with electricity and modern machinery to cut smaller trees and tap metric lumber markets abroad, Hull-Oakes remained successful cutting for a special market for which dimension mills are not capable of cutting. Prevented by its machinery and practices from efficiently and economically cutting dimension lumber for the emerging markets, the company also increasingly depended on a supply of large trees that soon became more and more difficult to obtain.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, success with steel and gluelaminated beams reduced the market for long and large timbers to gradually eliminate some of Hull's more than one dozen immediate-area competitors. More competition dropped away in the 1980s depression: large companies closed unprofitable specialty plants; and overextended smaller mills sold out or went bankrupt when they couldn't get cheap large timber. Ironically, the shake-up left Hull-Oakes in a somewhat better competitive position to service the remaining large-timber market with its antiquated and labor intensive, but largely paid for, machinery and steam plant.

Operating by Steam Today, approximately half the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. sawmill operates by steam, a factor helping establish its historical significance by providing a sense of time and place within the industry. Industrial-capacity electricity did not reach the rural Dawson area until 1949, leaving Hull little choice but to use steam to drive the high-powerdemand heavy machinery used in his plant. 68 The company did try electrical power when it was introduced, and planned to replace steam power. Gradually converting to electricity reduced the total of five steam engines once required to operate plant systems. But Hull retrenched after seeing

68Wisner, "Case Study," pp. 92-106 for discussion of steam power at the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Oakleaf, Lumber Manufacture, p. 5, for discussion concerning difficulties of using electric motors to power main sawmill equipment.


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electricity costs jump dramatically. He refused to convert the mill to total electric operation and stayed with the more economical steam power generated by burning sawdust and planer shavings to run his major log and lumber-cutting systems. Total electrification of plant machinery would be too expensive, Hull believed, particularly when "we saw our electric bill go from $2,000 to $10,000 a month for what we do use." And he believed the electrical equipment wouldn't be as reliable as steam power. 69

Hull concedes that steam power is probably less efficient and not as cost effective as it once was, taking more man hours of work to produce a thousand board feet of lumber than at most modern mills. 70 But he doesn't believe computerized machinery is rugged enough to handle his big logs, and he likes the feel of steam power as a personal experience that people must work with to appreciate. As he puts it: "Because we cut large logs, our operation doesn't lend itself to computerization. [Besides] I don't like them [computers]. They are too impersonal." 71

The sawmill relies for primary power on a used Regal model twin-cylinder, slide-valve, horizontal steam engine made in 1906 by the Ames Iron Works, Oswego, New York. 72 Begun in 1840 as Talcott & Underhill Co., the firm manufactured winches for the Great Lakes shipping trade. Henry M. Ames bought the company in 1854, calling it the Ames Iron Works, incorporating under that name in 1901 to manufacture portable, traction and stationary steam engines. Sold in 1919 to the Pierce-Butler Radiator Co., the Ames Iron Works continued to operate under its own name until 1962 when its


70wisner, "Case Study," p. 106.

71Ralph Hull, personal communication with author, 1994. That anticomputer philosophy also extends to the company business office, where paperwork is done by hand or with typewriters and records are stored in boxes.

72Steam engine specifications, see Appendix.

)


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buildings were dismantled and engine and boiler fabrication business discontinued. However, in 1979 it was listed as a di vision of Pomeroy, Inc. 73

Following Ralph Hull's philosophy of staying with steam and finding used machinery whenever possible, Homer Hull bought the steam engine in 1952 at auction where it was sold after forty years of prior service. He installed the engine in 1954-55 to replace a less-efficient one-cylinder used steam engine installed in 1939. As Hull explained his operating philosophy, and that of many other cash-deficient small sawmill owners of the period: "When you start out the way we did, you don't buy new machinery. .You buy second hand machinery and you buy that for a fraction of what the new machinery would cost. " 74 The company paid a Seattle industrial auction house $2,500.00 for the Ames Iron Works steam engine that still runs the sawmill's primary saw, and the edger saw drive through a series of shafts and belts frequently tensioned with pulleys counter-weighted by wornout heavy metal gears or concrete blocks. 75 Despite its age, Hull-Oakes employees regard the Ames twin-cylinder steam engine as the mill's most reliable machine -- a heavyduty engine that has not yet needed a total overhaul after nearly eighty-five years of use.

In addition to the mill's primary steam engine, Hull, in 1972, installed a similar used steam engine of indeterminate manufacture to operate the mill's log carriage. Consisting of two under-the-floor, diagonally-mounted steam-powered

73Terry Pryor, director-curator Oswego County Historical Society, personal communication with author, 1994. Cited, along with text from exhibit label on an Ames Iron Works steam engine at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village Research Center in Dearborn, Mich., in Wisner, "Case Study," pp. 93-6.

74Wisner, "Case Study," p. 97

75The purchase amount on original contract in Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. business files, shows the engine was inspected before purchase by Hubert K. McBee, who helped Hull build his sawmill.


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cylinders, the engine directly connects to a cable and drum system regulated by the mill's sawyer to move the sawmill's carriage back and forth on its east-west travel line. 76 Additional steam-powered cylinders operate the carriage's log-turning mechanisms and devices for loading logs onto the carriage.

Hull's steam-powered sawmill, with its whirling belts and shafts presents a variety of maintenance challenges for millwrights, not the least of which are occasional slipping belts, pitch and belt dressing on pulleys and misaligned pulley and tightener shafts. Father Andrew Mason Prouty described steam sawmilling in his master's thesis at the University of Washington as:

An organized chaos, a screeching bedlam of pounding machinery on a vibrating deck, where saws turn like streaks of circular lightning; the mill was an exciting place to work, an easy place to get killed. 77

That description well fits the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. sawmill. Hull, as do many of his employees, plays down the danger as just a part of working in a sawmill. He says, in understatement, that "a few people have been hurt [one man died as a result of injuries in fifty-eight years of sawmilling] and the steam engines have run away a few times, but they were shut down before anything too serious happened. "78

76For limited specifications of this engine, see Appendix.

77 Father Andrew Mason Prouty, "Logging With Steam in the Pacific Northwest The Men, The Camps, and the Accidents" (Unpublished Master's thesis, University of Washington, Seattle, 1973), pp. 149-50. Also Prouty, "More Deadly Than War - Pacific Coast Logging," (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1982. Also Wisner, "Case Study," pp. 92-107.

78Wisner, "Case Study," p. 101. For more information on safety issues in the lumber industry see Wisner, "Case Study," p.105.


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Claims filed with the Oregon Industrial Accident Commission show that sawmills are not as dangerous as they once were and that accidents have decreased over time. Although rare now, fatalities once were a fact of life in the industry. In 1946, for example, the Commission recorded eighteen fatalities at western Oregon sawmills, second only to the twenty-five reported for logging and log hauling -- making logging and lumbering the state's most dangerous industries.

By comparison, 608 claims were reported for western Oregon sawmills during 1995, and no fatalities -- a year in which Hull-Oakes workers filed four accident claims. 79

Keeping the company's obsolete steam engines running is a demanding exercise, requiring considerable individual skill, judgement and initiative. Hull, as well as millwrights who have worked for him, say the personal touch is necessary along with a good bedside manner to keep steam systems operating properly. Being a millwright at Hull-Oakes is different than at other plants, Hull says, because "you have to know something about steam, have to be a good steam man" to get the job done. 80 Retired millwright Ralph Kundert, who has 30 years experience with Hull-Oakes and one of three generations of his family to work there, talks of listening closely to the noises the engines make, like a doctor examining a patient's heart to see if it is functioning properly. Slight changes in sounds through steam escaping from leaking pipes, metallic knocks or clicks, can signal problems needing immediate treatment. Replacement parts frequently must be specially machined, as they are seldom available commercially. Preventive maintenance of the steam engines is a millwright's on-going responsibility. Several times daily, the company's two millwrights refill oil reservoirs on the machines, visually inspect the working machinery and tighten parts loosened by constant use -- all

79Claims Filed for Compensation with the Oregon Industrial Accident Commission, Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services, Salem Oregon, covers three-year periods from 1943-96.

80Ralph Hull, cited in Wisner, "Case Study," p. 99.


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duties requiring employee initiative, specialized skill and experience to assure the machines stay in working order, efforts well beyond switching motors on or off as is done at more modern electric plants. Most of the job at Hull-Oakes involves just listening and being in tune with the engine, Kundert says. "I'd say about 90 percent of it involves your ears. .just by listening, you could tell if you had to readjust this, or readjust that," a skill he learned over time by closely watching prior mechanics -- which he has passed on to younger millwrights before he retired, and to whom he sometimes becomes a visiting consultant. Most of his learning was on the job, Kundert emphasized -- "You just had to work on 'em. "81 After a year on the job, Hull-Oakes millwright Billy Moore is slowly becoming more familiar with the company's steam engine. Working on such antiquated machinery, and putting in a lot of overtime hours to keep it running, makes him feel part of a time when people "took pride in their work and built something that would last," a feeling he hasn't experienced while working in modern electric mills with their more hectic production pace and specialized electronic machines. 82 While at the heart of the company's operation, steam power represents only part of the industry's complicated lumber-production process.

Manufacturing Process at Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Like most manufacturing plants, sawmills rely on the coordination of various functions to turn a log into lumber: a place to store incoming logs, the sawmill itself, sorting and grading stations, transportation to move lumber into and out of storage and seasoning yards, a planing mill to produce finished lumber, machine and saw filing shops, and access to major transportation such as rail spurs to ship

81Ralph Kundert, cited in Wisner, "Case Study, pp. 101-04. Also Ralph Kundert, interview by author, 5 June 1997, field notes. Phil Kundert, interview by author, 30 May 1997, field notes.

82Billy Moore, interview by author, 29 July 1997, field notes


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out the finished product. 83 The sawmilling process at the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. has followed that general pattern over the years, primarily undergoing machinery changes and refinements where Hull thought practical, and with rapid and synchronous movement always common to workers on the lumbercutting floor. Although computers and lasers often control most cutting and sorting functions in many electrically operated modern sawmills, the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. relies on the observations, instinct, knowledge and experience of individual employees to do the job. This is particularly true with his use of steam power, which requires a complicated and labor-intensive daily start-up and maintenance procedure not seen in modern electric sawmills that start and stop with the push of a button. 84

Beginning at midnight before each workday, a fireman starts building fires in two Dutch ovens underneath the boilers, an interesting and ever-changing exercise, focusing on employee individuality and experience to do the job properly. "No two people build a fire the same way," says fireman Jerry King, the plant's night fireman for about twenty years. 85

Juggling water valve settings, constantly watching pressure gauges, shoveling sawdust and planer shaving fuel into the dutch ovens by hand or along an overhead chute while instinctively analyzing the combustibility of his fuel, King takes about five hours to get a firebox temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit -- pushing steam pressure to about 145

83Kelley, "History," pp. 44-47.

84The following discussion of the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. sawmill's manufacturing process largely summarizes Wisner, "Case Study," pp. 71-91. Also Wisner field notes, 27-29 June 1997, as process description also based on personal observations and on-job discussion with mill employees. Also see Brown, Lumber, pp. 37-125 for a good detailed discussion of sawmill manufacturing processes common to industry. Also see Oakleaf, Lumber Manufacture, pp. 5-129 for sawmilling process and machinery in Douglas fir sawmills. "Steam Powered Sawmill," a videotape recording by Golden Rail Video and Hull-Oakes Lumber Co., (Golden Rail Video, Glendale, Calif, 1996), provides good information on the sawmill and railroad leading to it, as well as related logging procedures.



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pounds per square inch. Then, he "gives it a kick in the backside" by opening firebox doors to inject a burst of air to fan the fire and quickly boost pressure to 150 pounds per square inch, the normal operating pressure for engines that begin running following a single call-to-work steam whistle blast at 7:00 A.M. five days a week. 86 A second fireman working around blistering hot steam pipes and open flame of a pit fire adjusts valves, gauges and fuel throughout each operating day, laboriously cooling down the firebox at 3:30 P.M. The boilers use about one-third of the sawdust produced daily at the plant.

When log trucks bring raw logs to the mill, drivers stop at a platform near the mill pond where an independent scaler from the Columbia River Scaling Bureau measures and checks with tape and probe each log for length, diameter, quality and species. Once scaled for the grade, or quality, of its logs, the trucker moves the logs to a concrete retaining wall called a "brow log" adjacent to the log pond. An equipment operator with a claw-type log loader drops logs into the pond from fixed-stake log trucks. The stakes are vertical metal arms on both sides of a log truck trailer, front and rear, to hold logs in place. Some stakes are fixed in place, others will release, dropping sideways away from the truck. A pond man, or "pond monkey," rolls logs off trucks equipped with moveable stakes with the help of a large-timber "A" frame and cables hoisted by an electricmotor-powered drum line once powered by a separate steam engine. Cables attached to the pond side of the brow log and connected to the "A" frame pull the log load up, acting as a slide for the logs to roll into the pond for working storage prior to beginning an assembly line lumber-cutting process. Riding a diesel-engine-powered, hollow metal boat to sort logs dropped into the pond, the "pond monkey" shoves them against an inclined ramp and endless chain called a side lift. At intervals, the "pond monkey" jumps from the boat onto the logs and drags a weight on a cable across a stack of logs to snug it against the side lift. Prior to

86Wisner, "Case Study," p.71.


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the boat, one man with a pike pole walked across the logs, shoving each log into place by hand. Each log is positioned on the side lift so its largest end will be sawed first, the desired direction to obtain the most efficient cuts. Metal arms called "chairs" on the side lift conveyor chains hoist each log onto a trough-type metal conveyor, which feeds the logs to a ring debarking machine for processing.

The electric-motor-powered Salem-Brunette log debarker installed in 1970 to capture log bark for a growing hogged fuel market basically consists of a fast rotating metal ring 6'-0" in diameter inside a metal frame. Five air-activated metal tool arms with replaceable tips within the ring scrape the bark from incoming logs up to 72" in diameter. An operator, relying on judgement and experience, controls rubbing pressure on the logs as they move through the ring, assuring the right amount of bark is removed and damage to logs minimized. With an electric console of buttons and levers, the operator also controls the sidelift from the pond to the debarker infeed. Patented in the early 1960s by Brunette Machine Works Ltd. in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Hull-Oakes machine was manufactured and sold under the Salem-Brunette name by Salem Equipment Inc. in Salem, Oregon. Brunette became Valon Kone Brunette Ltd. in 1990. The Hull-Oakes debarker is the largest designed by Brunette Machine Works Ltd. The machine was designed to replace a variety of less efficient large-log debarking methods developed during the 1940s. Early debarkers included high pressure log washers, and a "chain flail" technology where rotating metal chain links flailed bark from logs. The debarker was developed, in part, as a response to a wood chip market that emerged during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s throughout the country. 87 Costing approximately $95,000.00, Hull-Oakes installed the debarker to work in conjunction with a Salem Equipment Inc. bark hammer "hog," or bark processing machine inside the debarking building to turn bark scraped from the logs into bark chips for hogged fuel -

87Ronald D. Pousette, former president of the Brunette Machine Works Ltd., telephone interview by author, 15 July 1997, field notes.


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- a machine Donald Oakes, the mill's general manager, says has more than paid for itself through the sale of bark chips.BB Eight rows of twenty-five pound, shaft-mounted, rotating steel hammers inside the approximate $12,000.00 "hog" machine pound bark through a steel grate to produce the chips, which are fed to it from a metal conveyor under the debarker. Processed bark goes by conveyor to a metal storage bin just north of the main sawmill, where it awaits sale as hogged fuel. Hull-Oakes also debarks its logs to prevent damage to expensive saws from sand or gravel frequently embedded in the bark, saving about 25 percent in saw and knife blade steel in machines from the primary lumber-cutting saw to the planer. Debarked logs also allow company sawyers to see log defects more clearly and make better log-positioning decisions before cutting lumber products.B 9 Before installing the debarker, the company sent logs to the saws with their bark on.

After passing through the debarker, its operator sometimes activates an approximately 8 1 long machine-operated chain saw poised above the conveyor outfeed to cut long logs into desired lengths to fit specific lumber orders. An approximately 4' wide trough-type chain conveyor then moves debarked and "bucked" logs toward the main sawmill. The debarker operator kicks logs off the conveyor with hydraulically-operated metal arms onto an approximately 40' wide metal framework of transfer chains that haul logs along a steel platform toward the mill's primary saw, or "head rig." When the company installed the debarker and related conveyors and transfer chain system, it replaced a belt and cable log hauling device that pulled logs directly from the log pond to a holding deck to await primary sawing. The mill's sawyer controlled log entry to the holding deck.

Hull-Oakes cuts a variety of lumber, with all parts of the log now being used. The first cut made on a log, a "slab," has very little usable lumber; a board that is a minimum of

B8Donald Oakes, interview by author, 27 June 1997, field notes.

89Phil Kundert, interview by author, 29 May 1997, field notes.


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2" thick is a "cut" or "line"; one 4" or more is a "cant"; and any square cut is frequently called a "timber" or "post." When a log will not qualify for a timber cant, the mill cuts dimension lumber, much of which is defined as cuts ranging from 2" x 4" to 2" x 12" and anywhere from 8'-0" to 32'-0" long.

Before initial cutting, logs pass the "sawyer," the mill's primary decision maker who also controls the pace of the mill's lumber-cutting processes. Using trained judgement, and operating within a few seconds, the mill's sawyer decides how to get the most, and the best, cuts from each log, instantly sizing up its defects, both visible and hidden. Further complicating his duties, the sawyer has a daily job order telling him what sizes and grades of lumber are desired -- forcing him to watch closely for logs to fill those orders. After each pass of the saw, the sawyer also examines each log quickly and determines whether to reposition logs for changes in cutting pattern, and how deep to make the next cut. 90 Sitting in the open, and within inches of incoming logs and the mill's head-rig saw, the sawyer uses an elaborate method of hand signals common to the Douglas fir industry to communicate log-setting commands over deafening mill noise and swirling sawdust with a "ratchet setter" aboard the sawmill's carriage that takes logs through the "head-rig" band saw. The ratchet setter operates log-positioning and holding systems aboard the carriage, working closely and rapidly with the sawyer. Each man has specific synchronous tasks: The sawyer manipulates control handles that operate steam-powered steel arms allowing logs to move from the transfer chains to the carriage; determines where each cut on the log will be made, turning logs with a steam-activated metal arm log turner when necessary to get desired cuts; and activates the carriage to send logs through the saw. The ratchet setter, reacting to hand signals from the sawyer, activates a setworks putting each log in line for cutting and holds the

90Horn, Lumber Business, pp. 143-47 for good detailed discussion of sawyer's job in Douglas fir sawmill.


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log in place with air-activated metal hooks called "dogs" while the log passes through the saw. Frequently, the ratchet setter leaves his control seat to hook long boards with a pick, holding them in place while the saw passes through the log. His action prevents boards from dropping down from the log and being damaged or binding the saw.

The heavy-duty carriage at Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. is pivotal to its specialty timber market -- allowing the mill to cut timbers up to eighty-five feet long on one pass through the saw. The "carriage" frame at Hull-Oakes is 42'-8" long and 10'-2" wide, a heavy-duty sixteen-wheel steam-operated steel-track-mounted log-shuttling device manufactured by the Filer & Stowell Co. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Computers and lasers aid primary and secondary sawing processes in more modern electric sawmills, with sawyers sitting at a distance from the logs in air-conditioned booths filled with electric consoles regulating automated equipment cutting smaller and shorter logs. Logs in those mills often ride on a lighterduty carriage with no rider. The more complicated and labor-intensive process at Hull-Oakes is mechanical, assisted with steam and air pressure. The plant's present carriage is its second; the first wore out after operating for approximately thirty years. 91

When the sawyer loads a log onto the carriage with a steamoperated log stop and loader that emerges from the logconveyor floor, he pushes it against the carriage "knees," 25" tall upright metal stops on the carriage. The log stop and loader detains incoming logs at the foot of the inclined deck leading onto the carriage. Consisting of four hooked arms with curved bases, the stops fasten to a horizontal shaft running across the inclining deck parallel to the carriage. When at rest, the loader's arms extend 22" above the deck to securely hold the logs in place. The arms drop below the deck when activated, allowing one log at a time to roll toward the carriage.

91See Appendix for complete description of the sawmill's original carriage and its modification and replacement history.


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The sawyer moves each log onto the carriage, where it rests on carriage "blocks" or steel bolsters, and against upright steel plates called "knees." After receiving hand-signal direction from the sawyer, the ratchet setter adjusts the knees back and forth with a variable electrically operated dial-type, lever-activated "set works" to position a log for the depth of a desired cut. Although that "set works" is calibrated in 1/8" increments, the ratchet setter can finetune the settings to smaller increments with a built-in clutch system. Operating a single lever, the sawyer turns logs for subsequent cuts with a steam-powered log turner, a heavy-duty machine designed specifically to handle largediameter logs weighing several tons that once were common to Douglas fir sawmills. Power for the four-arm turner comes from a 15" diameter, 44" long steam-activated cylinder mounted diagonally beneath the log deck and at the foot of the carriage. The sawyer mechanically flips a hooked steel arm on the device to grip logs and turn them to get the best cuts. The sawing, or "breakdown" of each log is an individualistic process, with the Hull-Oakes mill sawing for "grade," or quality by "sawing around" the log by turning slabbed faces to attain maximum quality and quantity. An overhead chain hoist assists in turning logs too large for the general log turner to handle. 92 Once he positions a log, the sawyer sends it through the mill's "head rig" saw, repeating the attention demanding set-up process on subsequent passes. Sawyer Kenneth Kent said modern automated mills make it easier and safer to cut lumber, but he prefers the Hull-Oakes system because he has more personal control over the product. "Here, I get to cut each board down to the board it's going to be," said Kent, who admits to some hearing loss after working sporadically at Hull-Oakes over the last thirteen years. He also likes

92Horn, Lumber Business, pp. 143-44, for more complete description of the type of log turner used by Hull-Oakes and common to the Douglas fir industry; also p. 140 for discussion of common grade-sawing practice. Oakleaf, Lumber Manufacture, pp. 25-7, for types of log turners used in sawmills.


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working at a more deliberate and thoughtful pace than he said is allowed by automated systems. 93

The unique steam-powered "head rig" also is central to large-timber production at Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Called a Cunningham Band Mill, patented in 1890 and manufactured by the Filer & Stowell Co., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the mill is a right-hand 9'-0" long column, single-cutting, water-cooled bandsaw capable of cutting a log up to 9'-0" in diameter. It runs with a single-sided Swedish steel cutting blade 53'-6" long, costs about $1,400.00, has 232 teeth that must be sharpened twice daily, and lasts about two years. Made by a variety of companies, including the Simons Co. in Eugene, Oregon, the blade has tooth-like projections on one side called "sliver cutters," to remove slivers and keep them from hampering the lumber-cutting process.

Hull-Oakes bought and installed the machine in 1955 at a cost of $26,833.00, to replace the company's previous double circular saw, inserted tooth, "head rig" system. In the mill's circular saw scheme, a large-diameter circular saw was mounted below and offset from an overhead circular saw of a similar diameter. Equipped with replaceable teeth for rapid changing or sharpening, the saw system also contained a bark chipper in front of the upper saw to cut bark and some sap wood away from logs, allowing larger logs to be sawed. Under normal operations, the lower saw cut most logs, with the top saw activated when a log too large for the lower saw came toward it. Hull-Oakes switched to a band saw because it could cut larger-diameter logs, had a narrower "kerf" (about 1/4" instead of about W' with twin circular saws) to reduce sawing waste, and provided greater sawing accuracy. It's an improvement many small sawmills couldn't afford without a long-term timber supply to make the purchase cost-effective.

Keeping the band saw, and all the company's saws, maintained requires the special skills of a saw filer. The company's

93Kenneth Kent, interview by author, 29 July 1997, field notes.


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saw filer follows the sawyer in importance. He assures that all saws -- circular and band -- are properly sharpened, that band saws are properly tensioned to keep the sawing edge tight under operating conditions, and that band saw blades are leveled and running smoothly to properly produce the company's product. Once every four hours -- more frequently when conditions warrant -- the "head rig" and smaller resaw band mill are stopped to remove and replace the blades with newly sharpened ones. Before the changing process begins, a worker closes a steam valve to the band mill's power system -- the Ames steam engine, which must be shut down during the approximate eight-minute blade-changing process. Stopping the steam engine also temporarily idles the mill's edger saws, which are powered by the same engine. With a saddle-style overhead hoist, workers remove the "head-rig" saw from its arbors, lower it onto a long wooden dolly called a "skate board," and roll it into the mill's saw-filing shop about twelve feet away. Lifting the saw by hand, they place it in saw clamps and stands mounted around an electric Armstrong saw sharpener, made by the Armstrong Co. in Portland, Oregon. and powered by a belt and one horsepower electric motor. Two cams inside the sharpener's housing automate its primary equipment. One "feed cam" couples to a shaft and metal arms called "back feed fingers" that rotate into the saw gullet, or depressed space between teeth, moving the saw blade around the sharpener. One "head cam" moves a stationary shaft-mounted grinding wheel up and down in unison with the "feed cam", to sharpen or "gum" the teeth while the filer checks each tooth for proper condition, or "set." This includes inspecting the "swage," or the outward roll of each tooth tip from each side of the blade. Before sharpening begins, the sawyer visually inspects blades for cracks, broken or damaged teeth that must be repaired prior to sharpening.

In addition, the saw filer periodically levels and tensions the saws. When necessary, he levels the saw with a hammer, straight edge and special anvil. Using an electric-powered ''saw stretcher" he also laterally stretches the saw blade from the center. When the blades operate at high speeds their rims stretch farther than their centers, so the


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centers must be "pre-stretched" so they don't "snake," or deviate from the intended saw line and produce unevenly-cut boards while operating under approximately 15,000 pounds of tension. 94 The filer follows a similar procedure with the smaller "resaw" blade, which is hand-carried from the band mill to the saw-filing room. The saw filer also frequently checks the lumber-cutting efficiency of the band saws, noting nicks in boards or uneven cutting that indicate the need for immediate saw blade maintenance. He also closely inspects saw gullets to assure they remain round or ovalshaped, and not sharp angled, as sharp angled ones may crack because they can't efficiently remove sawdust. To sharpen circular saws with fixed or removable teeth, the filer uses two specially designed electrically-powered grinders. Throughout the overall saw sharpening process, the filer experiments with the shape, hook, depth, spacing and bevel of the saws to make them reach maximum efficiency for all cutting jobs.

Once a log passes through the ''head rig" saw, an off-bearer pulls the cut slabs and boards or timbers from the log onto powered rollers of a table called a roll case -- the start of a network of rollers and special chains moving lumber to various processing stations. The roll case coming off the head-rig saw is operated hydraulically, giving the offbearer greater control of heavy cants coming from the logs; the rest of the mill's roll cases operate electrically, with rolls being spaced about two feet apart and powered in approximate sixty-foot sections by separate motors and chains. For initial log cutting, the off-bearer joins the ratchet-setter and sawyer to assure a smooth process. This three-man team works rapidly, and with synchronous movements, on a vibrating deck where the heavy pieces of lumber weighing hundreds of pounds must be handled with careful attention.

Manipulating a hand lever, the off-bearer controls forward movement of cut lumber toward various processing stations.

94Tomy Coggswell, interview by author, 15 July 1997, field notes.


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With a foot pedal, he directs lumber by transfer chain to the edger -- a bank of five movable saws on a single arbor, each 12" in diameter, that create specific width boards with parallel sides. An edgerman using self-locking hand levers connected to forked saw guides manually adjusts the saws in 1/8" increments, feeding them lumber by hand and powered roller after using his judgement to assess each piece of lumber and determine the best way to cut it. From above, heavy press rolls force cants against the feed rolls and saw straight edge, preventing them from kicking back from saw thrust. The edger, manufactured by Sumner Iron Works of Everett, Washington, generally processes boards up to 60" wide, 10" thick, and 44'-0" long.

Once edged, lumber goes by roll case to the "gang trimmer", where a 44'-0" long bank of twenty-three independently operated overhead circular saws, each 3'-0" in diameter and mounted in a welded steel bridge-type truss frame, cut it to length. To increase trimming speed and efficiency, HullOakes installed the approximate 36,000 pound trimmer, manufactured by the Prescott Iron Works, Inc., Portland, Oregon, in 1959 for about $30,000.00. From a glass-enclosed booth above the trimmer roll case, the trimmerman judges the quality of each board going toward the saws below him. Hand operating a bank of levers, the trimmerman activates electric solenoids to drop the saws at two foot intervals for specifically-ordered cuts, to chop out defects, or to produce standard dimension lumber lengths (multiples of two feet). The boards are fed to the saws by pegged chains, with one passing to the side of each saw. These pegs are spaced at uniform intervals and set in rows parallel to the saw arbor so boards will enter the saws at right angles. The trim-saw operator cuts into short lengths wood he deems unuseable as lumber, which will go to the mill's wood chipper by conveyor for further processing. The gang trimmer eliminated two positions, increasing trimming speed and efficiency that previously relied on four men and two saws. The trimmer operator and an assistant now operate the


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expanded system which, in part, expedites the cutting of slab wood to sizes suitable for the mill's wood chipper. 95

Trimmed lumber drops onto powered rollers and goes to the wet lumber station, or "green chain," for visual inspection and grading, and hand sorting by six men and two lumber graders -- jobs automated lumber handling stations began to eliminate in the 1950s. Workers place high grade cants onto another set of powered rollers and a transfer case of rollers and chains takes it to the resaw, a previously used 7'-0" tall vertical band mill with a steel saw 44'-6" long and 12" wide. Manufactured by the Sumner Iron Works, Everett, Washington, this band mill was installed at HullOakes Lumber Co. in 1977 to replace a smaller band mill that Hull also purchased used. A resaw operator visually assesses each board, sets the saw cut setworks by pushing buttons on an electric console to adjust by 1/16" increments a metal rail "line bar" on the side of the saw infeed. Acting like the knees on the primary sawmill carriage, the line bar adjusts the depth of the cut for each cant. Once properly adjusted, the resaw operator hand feeds the cants through the bandsaw along powered rollers. Boards cut by the resaw return by powered rollers to the green chain for more sorting, visual inspection and grading for uniform size, shape and quality before being placed into stacks awaiting accumulation and grading to fill an order. 96

The head-rig off-bearer also directs selected cants to the big timber saw, which cuts specific long timbers to length. The saw, a swing-arm electric-motor-powered circular saw 5'-0" in diameter, trims cants up to 24" x 24" or larger and is installed at the rear of the mill where it won't impede other lumber-cutting processes. Because finished timbers

95Donald Oakes, interview by author, 14 July 1997, field notes.

96Brown, Lumber, pp. 177-205 discusses history of lumber grading in the United States, stating that Maine in 1830 established the first lumber grading system which, with some modification, followed the industry across the country to provide a fundamental basis assuring degrees of freedom from blemishes or other limiting defects.


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are too heavy to handle by hand, the saw operator moves them to stacks with a rubber-lined clamp-type electric hoist. The hoist uses the weight of the each cant to squeeze it without damaging the timbers, which are generally cut from the most dense and strongest part of the log, its central heartwood.

Orders for finished lumber go to a No.4 Stetson-Ross knifeblade timber sizer, or planer, for precise finishing. Planers are generally at a distance from the primary sawmill, but are considered integral to the sawmilling process. Although some planer machine patents date to as early as 1802, American inventor William Woodworth is credited with inventing the first widely accepted commercial knife-blade planer -- patented Dec. 28, 1828. Hailed by the U.S. Congress in 1850 as ''the greatest labor-saving invention produced in this country" since Eli Whitney's cotton gin, Woodworth's machine allowed one operator to do in fifteen minutes the day-long job of a man with a hand planer, contributing to its rapid adoption by sawmills. 97

The Hull-Oakes planer, and the building in which it is housed, pre-date the Hull-Oakes mill. They survived a June 1936 fire that destroyed the former W.J. Miller mill, which occupied the same site from 1920.

Hull incorporated what, at the time, was considered to be a high-quality planer into his operation, and he has not seen a reason to replace it despite continued driving mechanism refinements in knife-blade planers, which are used throughout the industry today. Called a 16" x 20" timber sizer, the No. 4 belt-driven machine was made by the Seattle-based Stetson-Ross Machine Works from 1910 to 1912. Harry Ross, who co-founded the company with George Stetson in 1907, designed the planer. The company produced a widevariety of planers under the Stetson-Ross name until 1982,

97Carolyn C. Cooper, "A Patent Transformation," pp. 292-97. Also see Rosenberg, "America's Rise to Woodworking Leadership," in America's Wooden Age: Aspects of its Early Technology, ed. Brook Hindle, (New York: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1975)," pp. 48-51, for discussion of planing mill history.


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when the Kimwood Corp. of Cottage Grove, Oregon, bought the planer mill equipment line. 98 Round cylinders revolving at high speed and fitted with up to six thin steel knives allow the planer to finish one or two sides or one or two edges of a board -- mechanisms similar to those Woodworth patented. Driven by seven belts and connected by separate belt to a 100 horsepower electric motor (which replaced the original steam engine drive), the planer contains a feed works of four 15" rolls, an automatic "set works" for adjusting lumber thickness, and a hand-operated headworks to adjust planer side heads. Operating the 85-year-old machine is complicated, requiring down-time ranging from five to twenty minutes to reset cutting heads for different lumber dimensions. Metal fatigue also forces frequent repairs, with mechanics sometimes using makeshift or mismatched parts from a warehouse of spare parts and machines that Hull-Oakes has stockpiled. Roller bearings have replaced some of the machine's original babbitt bearings. 99 As part of routine duties, the planerman also inspects the cutting angle of planer knives, checks his feed roll pressure adjustments so feed rolls are not damaged, and monitors cutting head adjustments -- all frequent tasks on the company's well-worn machine. 100 The timber sizer can plane, or size, timbers with dimensions of 16" thick by 20" wide, although it seldom planes anything larger than 16" squares. At its lower settings, the machine also can plane 1" x 4" dimension lumber. Kimwood company records are unclear as to the exact date of manufacture for the timber sizer at Hull-Oakes

98c.w. Jones, vice-president of marketing for Stetson-Ross Inc., "Historical Synopsis from 1907-1980," written 10 June 1980 and supplied to author by Kimwood Corp. in personal correspondence, 16 July 1997.

99Chandler Jones, "WOODWORKING," in Wood and Wood Products, p. 321 notes that babbitt bearings -- a two-piece unit on a shaft -- requiring skilled workers to maintain and replace, were replaced by roller bearings beginning in 1910. He also provides a good description of the bearings and how replacement of worn babbitt bearings often resulted in long periods of lost production while new ones were poured.

100scott Husleton, interview by author, 17 July 1997, field notes.


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Lumber Co. But they show this so-called "Cadillac of planers" first shaved boards in 1914 for the Hoquiam Sash and Door Co. in Hoquiam, Wash. Their records also show Miller owned the machine in 1931. When operating at maximum speed, a planer staff ranging from five to eight employees can plane about 43,000 board feet of lumber a day -- slow when compared to modern large-mill planers finishing 120,000 board feet a day or more. 101

Dimension lumber sizes, when they leave the planer, are generally smaller than the terms by which they are referred. For example, when Hull-Oakes cuts a 2" x 4" plank in the rough it is fully 2" thick by 4" wide, but when planed to standard market 2" x 4" sizes it is actually 1-9/16" x 3-5/8". For boards larger than dimension lumber, such as a rough cut 4" x 6" board or timbers, the planed dimension is about one-half-inch less -- or 3-1/2" x 5-1/2" for the 4" x 6" board. Many of their orders are for rough-cut sizes for heavy construction or re-manufacture elsewhere. Because its machinery is calibrated to United States measurement standards, the sawmill is unable to rapidly and accurately cut metric sizes. 102

In addition to the sawmill's lumber-cutting machines, a network of pipes and conveyors outside, inside, under and over the sawmill direct wood by-products of the milling process for use as boiler fuel or as marketable products. Driven by about twelve pounds of air pressure, planer shavings travel by overhead pipe across the length of the complex to the boiler fuel-storage house, where they are broken down for boiler fuel. A conveyor, operated by a 5'-0"-diameter wooden drive wheel built by the company's millwright in 1939 and attached to an electric motor, also shuttles sawdust from other sawing processes to the boiler fuel house. When his fuel-storage bin is full, the boilerman sends excess shavings and chips by overhead

101scott Husleton, interview by author, 29 May 1997, field notes.

102 Floyd Billings, interview by author, 13 June 1997, field notes.


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conveyor to a metal storage bin just north of the main sawmill to await sale for reprocessing into cladboard. An automated conveyor also moves wood chips and slabs toward the chipping machine, which breaks down the wood to even pieces about 5/8" long; larger wood chunks are cut into smaller pieces by hand before being fed into a shaking screen separator and steel-knife-blade wood chipper. Wood chips also are blown through a pipe to waiting rail cars for shipment to Georgia-Pacific Corp. in Toledo, Oregon, where it is manufactured into brown-paper products such as cardboard boxes. The cars are attached by cable to a reciprocating winch that moves them back and forth under a swinging nozzle called a "wig-wag" to evenly distribute the chips that fill about one car daily. A railroad car well, unused and adjacent to the planer and loading dock, once allowed workers to quickly hand load finished lumber onto rail cars from stored lumber stacks -- a job now done by forklift.

Finished lumber Prior to World War II, Northwest sawmills routinely cut timbers, such as Hull-Oakes produces, for markets in the Orient. Today, Hull-Oakes' large timbers order vary: historic preservation projects such as the U.S.S. Constitution decking; covered bridge superstructure work; crane mats to protect highways from damage by cranes conducting highway work; bridge decking for salt-damaged concrete bridges in the Northern Midwest States and Canada; boat keels; and in 1996 a special order for 272,000 board feet of 12" x 12" timbers to build a protective crib structure for a water inlet pipe for the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Conclusion The Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. is in many ways a technological contradiction. Although a product of a by-gone age of steam, it has maintained essential criteria allowing it to survive while other small sawmills have failed. Factors making it an exception to the rule also paved the way for its success, or at least survival in a modern, highly competitive and


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volatile Pacific Northwest timber industry. With a management style rooted in backwoods common sense, thrift and initiative, Hull steered his company toward the twentyfirst century from his Depression-era roots. Because the mill uses labor-intensive machinery now well out of the mainstream of modern sawmilling, it could not operate without heavy reliance on the individual skills and initiative of employees to produce the company's wood products. Looking ahead, Hull also took another unique step in the timber trade when in 1989 he turned 49 percent of his business over to select workers, his first step in letting a new generation of owners -- primarily family -- run the business. With continued reliance on antiquated, but economical, steam power in an era of space-age efficiency and diminishing supplies of the large trees upon which his large and long timber specialty is based, the company remains profitable while utilizing skilled older workers to train a new crop of craftsmen to cope with the complexities of steam engineering.

The integrity of the site has been maintained and is evident in the location, setting, structure, machinery, and workmanship. As such, the uniqueness of his machinery, buildings cobbled together and seemingly maintained only when necessary, and a sawmill business operation locked into another era, may represent the ultimate expression of Depression Era sawmilling in the Pacific Northwest. The plant offers a valuable source of historical and technological information pertaining to the sawmilling industry in this country in general, and to the once common but now rare steam-powered and large-tree-centered Douglas fir sawmills of the Pacific Northwest in particular.

APPENDIX


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This section describes the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co., its buildings, structures and steam plant. It also contains subsections related to specifications for the company's Ames Iron Works steam engine, its carriage-drive steam engine and the history and evolution of the carriage for taking logs through the mill's primary lumber-cutting saw.

The Plant Today, the company's sawmill is a functioning mix of used and old machinery and buildings modified to fit specific purposes -- reflecting the cultural era and locale in which they were built. As such, the mill reflects the frugal and practical operating strategy of Ralph Hull, its surviving architect and builder. In general, the mill complex consists of the main sawmill building, a lumber planing shed, a building housing two boilers fired by under-thefloor brick Dutch ovens, a shed for debarking logs, and an idle wigwam-style refuse burner. It also includes a mill pond, business office housed in a former rental home built on the site in the 1940s for a night watchman, former business office also associated with the W.J. Miller mill and the railroad and now used as mill superintendent's office and employee lunchroom, lumber-storage sheds, a truck maintenance garage, several small outbuildings, two waterstorage reservoirs holding a total of 620,000 gallons, and a concrete water-diversion tunnel to protect the mill's wooden support structure. The buildings are primarily of wood frame and some non-combustible construction, one and two stories in height, with metal siding and wood-and-metalcovered roofs. Walls are part open sided. Portions of the wood frame, posts and beams and siding are clad with corrugated metal. Some mill building floors originally were earth, but have gradually been converted to concrete, wood and steel. The following is a description of primary buildings and structures directly related to the sawmilling process:

Main Sawmill - Although irregular in shape, the main sawmill is roughly 250' x 100'. According to Hull, the main mill


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originally contained about 50,000 board feet of lumber, and was built without benefit of formal plans, although its layout parallels those found in manuals and trade journals of the time. 103 Primary and secondary saws and lumber transfer roll cases as well as a saw-filing shop occupy the building's main floor. A small machine shop occupies a small area just below the main sawing floor. The mill's main and auxiliary steam engines, carriage-drive engine, assorted shafts, gears, pulleys and other running gear occupy what amounts to a basement area under the building. Much of the under-the-floor maze is surrounded by concrete footings, water channels and conveyors. The two-story building itself sits atop a reinforced concrete foundation and a variety of concrete pads to which various items of machinery are tied. For the most part, it is of a standard post and beam construction with V- shaped, and lateral carrying trusses for an upper framing above a barn-board plank floor. The building is approximately 40' tall at its highest point. Its thirty-degree pitch gable roof has overhanging eaves; the wood-frame building and roof are clad with corrugated sheet metal. Where wood siding is left visible, it is basic, vertical boards and battens. Because much of the mill is open-sided, there are few windows in it. However, there are two twin-panel six-light casement windows providing light to a saw-filing room on the building's northwest side. The saw-filing room is directly north of the main lumber-cutting saw, or head-rig. It was built in about 1953 when the building was modified to accommodate a band saw to replace twin circular saws that had been the mill's primary lumber-cutting saws for twenty four years. The positioning of the saw-filing shop, just west of the north-south axis of the sawmill, provides quick access to saw blades for sharpening. There are also five panels of six window lights each mounted in a row near the top of a sliding barn door that is an equipment entry to the saw shop. And there is one four-light panel on the building's north side. The lights are tied together by standard

103Hull, "Ralph Hull: A Life," pp. 71-2. Wisner, "Case Study," 1995, p. 38. Kelley, "History," 1992, pp. 42-44.


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mintons. This part of the mill was built in 1938, but was reconstructed and remodeled on its north side in the 1950s to accommodate the bandsaw (including addition of a cupola above the band saw to accommodate a saddle-type hoist used to change saw blades), on the east side in the late 1950s to install a bank of saws known as a "gang trimmer," and to cover a lumber transfer station for wet lumber known as the "green chain." Further remodeling occurred on the northwest side in the early 1970s to accommodate a log debarker, bark processor called a "hog," and redesigned log transport system to the main timber-cutting saws. A lumber-sorting chain-type steel conveyor extends about 125 feet to the south from the south-east end of the main mill. The sorter is about 30' wide and covered by a post-and-beam supported, metal-clad gabled roof with overhanging eaves.

Hull built the main sawmill simply and with form following function. As he explained:

There weren't many choices at that time. We poured concrete footings and put up 12" x 12" posts and 12" x 12" caps on top of the posts with a 12" joist on top of those and that was the mill floor. And we had to build the concrete base for the steam engine that ran the mill. .which is about 8 feet above ground level. The platform for the engine is beneath the center of the mill. .No, we didn't have any elaborate plans to build the mill, we just built it. .had a good sawmill person named Hubert K. McBee. .sawmill people just go ahead and build 'em. They know what's needed and what corners to cut, and that's how we did it. 104

104wisner, "Case Study," 1995, p. 44 quoting Hull and wooden pulley discussion, pp. 41-71 for discussion of mill complex buildings and structures.


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The main sawmill also houses the log-shuttling carriage, an edger saw for making boards with parallel sides, a resaw for reprocessing lumber orders, and a large-timber saw for trimming long and large timbers.

Log Pond - The log pond, to the west of the sawmill, is approximately 650' long, 150' wide and 15' deep. On a small tributary of Oliver Creek known as Miller Creek, it has an earthen bottom with earthen rims partially surrounded by concrete to provide working storage for incoming logs. Built in about 1919 to support previous sawmill operations, the pond originally was smaller and later upgraded to its present dimensions to hold more logs.

Boiler and Fuel Storage House - A two-story boiler house and fuel bin sits about seventy feet south of the main sawmill, connected by a steel conveyor mounted on concrete pads. The most prominent features of the structure are two 120'-0" tall metal smokestacks that carry away the smoke produced by combustion of sawdust and planer shavings in the boiler fireboxes below. A planer-shavings cyclone is attached to the top of the building, which also houses a fractionator to break down planer shavings for use in the boiler furnaces. The company sells surplus shavings and sawdust for use in cladboard. The fuel storage bin is built of laminated 2" x 6" boards and 2'' x 8" boards, its sides reinforced with bolted beams. The attached boiler house measures roughly 60' x 35'. Construction materials include concrete, brick and posts, corrugated sheet metal siding and roof. There are no windows in this building. Part of W.J. Miller's previous steam-powered mill, it was built in about 1920 to house two boilers. Demonstrating his penchant for used equipment and buildings, Hull incorporated the boiler house and boilers into his plant, adding the upper story fuel-storage area for his purposes. The inside is a maze of piping and brick used to construct two under-the-building Dutch ovens used to fire the PSMD-brand riveted-steel boilers. The boilers are wrapped in brick. One boiler dates to 1911, and was installed about 1920; the second boiler came from the Freres sawmill near Mill City, Oregon. It dates to about 1915, and was installed at the Hull-Oakes


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sawmill ca. 1980. It replaced an older boiler considered to be obsolete, worn-out and unusable. The third boiler remains in the boiler house for water storage.

All the boilers are constructed of 285C pressure-vesselquality steel plate; the two actively-used boilers are fired with sawdust and planer shavings. They are called 72 x 18 boilers, which means they are 6'-0" in diameter with heating tubes inside that are 18'-0" long. Known as two-step horizontal return tube boilers, fire from double Dutch ovens heat the belly of the boilers to temperatures approaching 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, returning water through the metal tubes to further heat the water in the boilers. The boilers are suspended from ceiling rods. They consist of cylindrical shells with flat-ended enclosures into which the .125" thick metal heating tubes are inserted. The arrangement provides the 150-pounds per square inch of steam pressure needed to operate the sawmill's steam engines. The complete history of the boilers is not known. But fire tube boilers such as those in the Hull-Oakes sawmill have been an industry standard for years because of their comparatively low cost of installation, large water capacity and ability to absorb sudden demand fluctuations that are common to sawmills where power required to operate saws varies throughout each working day. 105 Boiler-feed water is gravity flow by underground pipe from reservoirs on a hill above and directly south of the boiler house. Reservoir water comes from springs atop the hill, augmented by water pumped uphill from Oliver Creek and the log-storage pond.

Planer Building - A one-story, wood-frame planer building sits about 200' southeast of the main sawmill. The building was built in about 1920. Approximately 100' long, 50' wide, and 24' high, the building is typical post and timber construction. Its thirty-degree roofline with corrugated metal roof has overhanging eaves. An open-sided wood-frame lumber storage shed built in 1941 attaches to the east end,

105carl D. Sheilds, BOILERS: Types, Characteristics and Functions (New York: F.W. Dodge Corp., 1961), pp. 11, 18-19.


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measuring approximately 162' long by 60' wide. It is about 34' high, and has "A" frame roof trusses and a lean-to storage shed attached to its south side, with a corrugated metal roof. The building sits on timber posts atop concrete foundation piers. Lumber also is stored on large expanses of concrete and gravel lots around the building for accumulation, grading, and sale.

Wigwam Burner - To meet the then new Oregon Department of Environmental Quality air quality standards for refuse burning at sawmills, the Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. in the 1950s built an all-metal wigwam-style conical refuse burner. It sits about 200' southwest of the main sawmill and directly adjacent to the south side of the mill pond. 106

Responding to the state Air Quality Act of 1967, Hull decommissioned the refuse burner in about 1970 as air quality standards became more strict and markets developed for sawmill byproducts -- bark and wood chips -- that once were burned. Before erecting the burner, Hull, and other mill operators, routinely burned sawdust, planer shavings, wood slabs and bark in open fires, sometimes setting their mills on fire or starting fires in adjacent forests where the mills were frequently built. The burners enclosed the fires, provided air flow to concentrate burning, and screened the emission of burning debris. Once a common visual aid to identifying sawmills on the landscape, Hull's burner is one of a dwindling number of the industry's key symbolic markers. The structure is about 50' tall, topped with a wire screen cap that is about 8' tall, and is about 57' in diameter at its base. Hull regards the unused burner as a monument to the ever-changing, and frequently expensive, political landscape he must negotiate, and about which he often rails: "They made us put one in and they made us take it out. That's typical politics for you. 11107

106wisner, "Case Study," p. 51, for discussion of sawmill refuse burning.

107 Ibid.


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Company Office -- A former one-story house built in the early 1940s for the mill's night watchman, it is about 175' northeast of the main sawmill, and on the north side of Dawson Road. It is built as a bungalow, wood-frame style, residence. It was modified with an addition constructed on the east side of the building sometime during the 1950s to further accommodate the use of the building as an office. It sits on a concrete foundation. The ship-lap, drop-sided office itself measures about 35' x 20'. It has a concrete and steel vault on its south end, measuring about 11' x 18'. The building has a wood-shingled roof with a thirty-degree roofline with overhanging eaves. On the south side of the office, there is one six-over-one double-hung sash window measuring 16" x 28"; and one six-over-one double-hung sash window measuring 34" x 50". There also is one six-over-one double-hung sash window on the east side of the building; and one single-light fixed window measuring 72" x 40". A concrete deck on the north end of the house forms a pad for a two-vehicle carport attached to the office. Steel beams and posts support the carport roof. There is one six-overone double-hung sash window on the building's west side measuring 35" x 52". There also is a twelve-light fixed window on the same side, with lights connected by standard mintons. Building windows are surrounded by plain trim. A small front porch on the west side of the building covers the front entry way and plain entry door.

Former Business Office -- Sitting on the north side of Dawson Road about sixty feet north of the main sawmill, the former office was built in the late 1920s as an office and combination storage area and depot for a rail line serving the W.J. Miller lumber Co. and the Corvallis Logging Co. The former office is now used as an employee lunch room and office for the sawmill superintendent. Its thirty-degree pitch roof has overhanging eaves. The building is roofed with corrugated metal. Although most of the building has no concrete foundation, there is a small concrete loading and storage dock on its north end. There are three one-over-one double-hung sash windows on the east side measuring 50" x 27"; two one-over-one double-hung sash windows on the south


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end also measure 50" x 27"; and one-over-one double-hung sash window on the west side measures 50" x 27".

Truck Maintenance Garage -- Sitting about 150' north of the main sawmill the approximate 30' tall truck and lumber carrier maintenance garage was built in 1941. The thirtyfive-degree roof line of the post and timber building has over-hanging eaves, a corrugated metal roof and sides of vertical boards and battens. The garage originally was built on a cedar log foundation. There's a brick chimney on the building's east end. There are two pairs of six-light casement windows on the building's east side; and two pairs of six-light casement windows on the north end. The building has a wood and concrete floor, and a flared corrugated metal roof extension on its west side.

Function and simplicity, rather than architectural form, also guided construction of other structures associated with the saw milling process. These include construction in 1960 of a two-story wood-frame storage bin for wood chips that also holds the company's wood chipping machine; construction in 1960 and 1967 of two metal roofed concrete reservoirs holding about 620,000 gallons of water for boiler feed water and fire suppression; and construction in 1970 of a twostory, steel-beam-supported, house for the mill's log debarker machine that measures approximately 18' x 30'. Seeking to protect the sawmill's wooden superstructure, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. in the mid-1950s built an underground concrete tunnel under the mill to channel and divert log pond and Oliver Creek flows away from the sawmill's wooden footings, which were gradually replaced with concrete. Routed along the north side of the mill to Oliver Creek, the tunnel is about 12' tall and 12' wide at its largest part and runs for several hundred feet under the main sawmill.

Ames Iron Works Steam Engine -- A 1906 Ames Iron Works catalog gives the following specifications for the engine: Sixteen-inch diameter pistons; 18" stroke; 220 horsepower per piston at 160 revolutions per minute; 96" diameter flywheel; 26" diameter pulley face (across which stretches a vulcanized leather belt 44 1 -6 11 long to drive mill machinery,


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one of three main drive belts operating off the engine's main drive shaft) . 108 The engine is 12'-11-1/2" long, 10'-5" wide, and weighs 15,750 pounds. It has an 8" diameter main shaft, with a 13" long main bearing. The catalog also describes the engine as being a balanced slide-valve type, consisting of a flat casting working between seat and pressure plate, locomotive guides, and forged-steel connecting-rods fitted with cast-iron crank pin boxes lined with babbitt . 109 An alloy for lining bearings. consisting of tin, copper and antimony, babbitt was named after American inventor Isaac Babbitt. The engine also includes a springloaded pendulum-type governor to automatically slow the engine if its speed increases beyond a pre-determined limit. It includes oil cups, a centrifugal oiler for each crank shaft pin, sight feed lubricator for each piston and cylinder drip cocks operated by a single lever for each cylinder. Foundation mounting bolts are about 6' to 7' long, and mounted in concrete.

108Theodore Z. Penn, "The Development of the Leather Belt Main Drive," IA The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, 7, 1 (1981): 1-14, provides good discussion of the contributions of the leather belt main drive to factory engineering. Dennis E. Howe, "The Page Belting Company: A Study of 19th Century Power Transmission Belting Manufacturing," IA The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, 19, 1 (1993): 5-20, provides good detailed discussion of belting manufacture.

109Neil Cossons, The BP Book of Industrial Archaeology (London: David & Charles, 1975), pp. 105, 110, says the slide valve was invented in 1799 by William Murdock (1754-1839), and the horizontal steam engine was introduced as early as 1802, rapidly becoming popular as a mill engine. The slide valve system consists of a metal box sliding on a flat face containing steam inlet and exhaust ports. Steam is admitted at the ends and exhausted through a central port under the hollow box valve, with steam pressure helping retain the valve in contact with the face. For further discussion of steam engine and boiler technology, see Cossons, pp. 79-123; Arthur Raistrick, Industrial Archaeology An Historical Survey (London: Eyre Methuen Ltd., 1972) pp. 118-20, for further discussion of horizontal steam engine development; and Kenneth Hudson, Industrial Archaeology An Introduction (London: John Baker Publishers Ltd., 1963), pp. 99-100 for discussion of horizontal steam engine development and application.


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Carriage Drive Steam Engine -- The cable-drum-style carriage-drive twin-cylinder steam engine, is 9'-2" long from the base of its cylinders to the top of the cable drum, 5'-0' wide, with 15" diameter cylinders. 110 The engine contains no visible manufacturer's markings, and Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. has no identifying paperwork on the used auctionbought engine.

Sawmill Carriage Modification History -- As Hull described the original carriage, its modification and replacement history:

The carriage frame consisted of two Douglas fir timbers, one 10" x 15" and one 10" x 20", both 45-feet long and were furnished by the I.P. Miller sawmill, located on the upper [west] end of the same log pond [that Hull uses]. The carriage track was made of selected straight ordinary railroad rails and the carriage tracks had flat babbitt bearings with the bottom bearing half there of [sic.] carrying waste materials for lubrication. The wheels were single flange cast chilled, or 'hard iron.' There were four 72" screw type heavy head blocks equipped with replaceable face plates. The setter on the carriage set his own dogs. The carriage set works were first powered with about 1-1/2" diameter manilla hemp rope that ran in grooved pulleys and required a highly skilled worker to splice it. Originally a worker from the Brownsville Woolen Mills spliced the rope. After a few years the rope and grooved pulleys were discarded and replaced with a 4" flat transmission belt and flat pulleys. Subsequently the flat belts and pulleys on the carriage set works were replaced with a 'shot gun'-type [fast moving] air cylinder and an 85'-0" long piston that provided a constant supply

110Measurements taken and recorded by author, field notes.


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of air to run an Eimco air-powered motor which activated the carriage set works. In June, 1967, an offset carriage with pantograph was purchased from Lulay Brothers, a sawmill at Scio, Oregon. It was installed in 1968. This carriage had a vee rail, together with axles and bearings that provided a 3/8" off-set on the carriage on its return travel, protecting the bandsaw from dragging on the log or remaining lumber cant [a log slabbed on one or more sides] . 111

111Ralph Hull, personal corrununication with author, 1994. Oakleaf, Lumber Manufacture, pp. 21-33 for detailed description of sawmill carriage operation.

Sources Consulted

Notes on Sources


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Because this narrative focuses on the existing Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. sawmill and its processes, its operational integrity as a specialized steam-powered sawmill for more than fifty years while under almost continual direction of one man -- Ralph Hull -- and its historic context within the sawmill industry, the choice of sources consulted reflects this direction. A considerable number of books and papers have addressed sawmilling's overall historical context, and the author is indebted to those writers for their research and scholarship. Various documents available through Benton County government departments, Oregon Employment Division and Consumer and Business Services Department, Oregon State University's Valley Library, University of Oregon's Knight Library, the Benton County Historical Society and Museum, Western Wood Products Association and the World Forestry Center in Portland, and the State Historic Preservation Office in Salem also provided information useful to this report.

Information on the mill itself, its operations and processes, came from a variety of sources, including significant contributions by sawmill employees who freely explained their jobs and the mill's operational systems.

Much of the information on the mill and its founder came from Ralph Hull, and was drawn from a series of oral history interviews with him that were conducted by the author between 1992 and 1994, as well as limited interviews during 1997. Selected portions of those interviews also are included in nomination documentation of the sawmill for the National Register of Historic Places, also prepared by this author. The sawmill complex was officially placed on the National Register on Aug. 2, 1996.

Unfortunately, a complete review of company records was not possible for this report. Following a long-standing policy, and because of the way historic company records are kept (in


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boxes stored in the business office attic), company officials allowed only limited review of business records. The general contents of those records is not known. But it is likely they contain some information of historic value. The complete company history may not be known until those records are opened to the public.

Books

Andrews, Ralph W. This Was Sawmilling. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 1994.

Austin, Ed and Tom Dill. The Southern Pacific in Oregon. Edmonds, Washington: Pacific Fast Mail, 1987.

Brown, Nelson C. Lumber. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1947.

Cooper, Carolyn C. "A Patent Transformation: Woodworking Mechanization in Philadelphia, 1830-1856," in Early American Technology: Making and Doing Things From the Colonial Era to 1850, ed. Judith A. McGaw. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994, 278-327.

Cossons, Neil. The BP Book of Industrial Archaeology. London: David & Charles, 1975.

Cox, Thomas R., Robert S. Maxwell, Phillip Drennon Thomas, and Joseph J. Malone. This Well-Wooded Land. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.

Douglas, David. Journal Kept by David Douglas During His Travels in North America, 1823-1827. London: William Wesley and the Royal Horticulture Society, 1914.

Ellis, Lucia. Head Rig: Story of the West Coast Lumber Industry. Portland, Oregon: Overland West Press, 1965.

Ficken, Robert E. The Forested Land: A History of Lumbering in Western Washington. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987.


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Fisher, Jim. Starker Forests: The Legacy of T.J. Starker. Bend, Oregon: Color Press, 1991.

Horn, Stanley F. This Fascinating Lumber Business. Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943.

Hudson, Kenneth. Industrial Archaeology: An Introduction. London: John Baker Publishers Ltd., 1963.

Miller, Mike H. Forests, People and Oregon: A History of Forestry in Oregon. Salem, Oregon: Oregon State Forestry Department, 1982.

Oakleaf, H.B. Lumber Manufacture in the Douglas Fir Region. Chicago: Commercial Journal Co., Inc., 1920.

Peterson, Charles E. Early Lumbering: A Pictorial Essay," in America's Wooden Age: Aspects of its Early Technology, ed. Brooke Hindle. Tarrytown, New York: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1975, 63-84.

Raistrick, Arthur. Industrial Archaeology: An Historical Survey. London: Eyre Methuen Ltd, 1972.

Robbins, William G. Lumberjacks and Legislators: Political Economy of the U.S. Lumber Industry, 1890-1941. College Station, Texas: Texas A & M University Press, 1982 .

----- . Hard Times in Paradise: Coos Bay Oregon, 1850-1986. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1988.

Rolt, L.T.C. and J. S. Allen. The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen. New York: Science History Publications, 1977.

Rosenberg, Nathan. "America's Rise to Woodworking Leadership," in America's Wooden Age: Aspects of its Early Technology, ed. Brooke Hindle. Tarrytown, New York: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1975, 37-62.


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Schumacher, E.F. Small is Beautiful. London: Blond & Briggs Ltd., 1973; New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989.

Sheilds, Carl D. BOILERS: Types, Characteristics and Functions. New York: F.W. Dodge Corp., 1961.

Storer, J.D. A Simple History of the Steam Engine. London: John Baker Publisher, 1969.

Van Tassel, Alfred J. and David W. Bluestone. Mechanization in the Lumber Industry. Philadelphia: Work Projects Administration, National Research Project, Report No. M-5, 1940.

Theses

Holmes, J.F. "The Evolution of Logging and Mill Equipment." Unpublished Senior thesis, Oregon Agricultural College, Corvallis, 1920.

Kelley, Joan Mary. "The History of the Lumber Industry in Oregon's Douglas Fir Region: An Examination of Historic Architecture in Five Mill Towns." Unpublished Master's thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene, 1992.

Longwood, Frank Russell. "A Land Use History of Benton County, Oregon." Unpublished Master's thesis, Oregon State College, Corvallis, 1940.

Meany, Edmond S., Jr. "The History of the Lumber Industry in the Pacific Northwest to 1917." Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1935.

Medin, Anmarie. "A Research Design for Determining Legal Significance of Logging Related Historic Properties in Jackson Demonstration State Forest." Unpublished Master's thesis, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California, 1994.


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Prouty, Father Andrew Mason. "Logging With Steam in the Pacific Northwest: The Men, the Camps, and the Accidents, 1885-1918." Unpublished Master's thesis, University of Washington, Seattle, 1973 .

----- . "More Deadly Than War! - Pacific Coast Logging 1827-1981." Unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, Seattle, 1982.

Wisner, George B. "Hull-Oakes Lumber Company's Steam-Powered Sawmill: A Case Study in Industrial Archaeology." Unpublished Master's thesis, Oregon State University, Corvallis, 1995.

Journals and Reports

Dembo, Jonathan. "The Pacific Northwest Lumber Industry During The Great Depression," Journal of the West 24 (1985) : 51-62.

Dennis, Michelle and Liz Carter. Benton County Oregon Historical Context Statement. 1846-1945. Corvallis: Benton County Development Department, 1996.

Greeley, W.B. "The Westward-Ho of the Sawmill," Sunset June, 1923, 56-7, 96-100.

Howe, Dennis E. "The Page Belting Company: A Study of 19th Century Power Transmission Belting Manufacturing," IA The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 19, 1 (1993): 5-20.

Jones, Chandler. "WOODWORKING: 100 Years of Evolution, The Technology," in Wood and Wood Products Centennial. 1896-1996. Lincolnshire, Illinois: Vance Publishing Corp.: 313-377.

Lumberman's Handbook and Directory of the Western Forest Industry. Seattle: Miller Freeman Publications, 1956.


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Mater, Jean. "Reinventing the Forest Industry," in Wood and Wood Products Centennial. 1896-1996. Lincolnshire, Illinois: Vance Publishing Corp.: 116-24.

Oregon Industrial Accident Commission. Report on Claims Filed. 1943-1965, 1976-1995. and 1972-95 for Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Oregon Department of Business Affairs, Salem.

Oregon Employment Division, Report on Labor Statistics for Sawmill Industry. 1947-1996. Oregon Employment Division, Salem.

Penn, Theodore z. "The Development of the Leather Belt Main Drive," IA The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 7, 1 (1981): 1-14.

Robbins, William G. "Labor in the Pacific Slope Timber Industry: A Twentieth Century Perspective," Journal of the West 25 (April, 1986): 8-13.

West Coast Lumberman's Association Statistical Handbook. 1925-62. Portland, Oregon.

Western Wood Products Association. Statistical Yearbook for 1970 and 1995. Portland, Oregon.

Interviews

Bell, John. Day fireman, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interview by author, 28 May 1997, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.

Billings, Floyd. Sales manager, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interviews by author, 28 and 29 May 1997; 4 and 13 June 1997; 2 July 1997, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.


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Coggswell, Tomy. Saw filer, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interviews by author, 28 and 29 May 1997, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.

Ehinger, Paul F. Forest industry consultant and statistician. Interview by author, 3 June 1997, Eugene, Oregon. Field notes and manuscript. In hands of author.

Giesy, Wayne. consultant, former sales manager and part owner, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interview by author, 30 May 1997, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.

Hall, Virgil. Retired sawmill worker, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interview by author, 11 October 1994, in Bellfountain. Tape recording. In hands of author.

Hull, Ralph. Founder, chief architect, builder and principal owner, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interviews by author, 2, 6 and 11 February 1992; 29 April 1992; 6 May 1992; 5 and 7 December 1994, all at sawmill. Tape recordings. In hands of author.

, interview by author, 4 June 1997, at sawmill. -----Field notes. In hands of author.

Huselton, Scott. Planerman, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interviews by author, 28 May and 17 July, 1997, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.

Kent, Kenneth. Sawyer, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interview by author, 29 July 1997, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.

King, Jerry. Night fireman, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interview by author, 14 December 1994, at sawmill. Tape recording. In hands of author.

Kundert, Brad. Timber sawyer, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interview by author, 28 May 1997, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.


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Kundert, Phil. Sawmill superintendent and part owner, HullOakes Lumber Co. Interviews by author, 27 and 29 May 1997; 13 June 1997; 2 July 1997, all at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.

Kundert, Ralph. Retired millwright and former owner, HullOakes Lumber Co. Interviews by author, 16 November 1994, at sawmill. Tape recording. In hands of author.

Mater, Jean. Vice-president of Forest Products Marketing Services Division, Mater Engineering, Corvallis, Oregon. Interview by author, 29 July 1997, in Corvallis. Field notes. In hands of author.

Moore, Billy. Millwright, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interview by author, 29 July 1977, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.

Nystrom, Todd. Forester and part owner, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interview by author, 4 June 1997, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.

Oakes, Donald. General manager and part owner, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interviews by author, 28 and 29 May 1997; 4 and 13 June 1997; 2 July 1997, all at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.

Oakes, William. Yard superintendent, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interview by author, 2 July 1997, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.

Rodgers, Patti. Public information specialist, Willamette National Forest. Telephone interview by author, 25 June 1997, Eugene, Oregon. Field notes. In hands of author.

Schindler, Paul. Trimmerman, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co.Interview by author, 28 May 1997, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.


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Wiard, Mike. Pondman, Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. Interview by author, 28 May 1997, at sawmill. Field notes. In hands of author.

Video Recording

Steam Powered Sawmill. Golden Rail Video, Glendale, California and Hull-Oakes Lumber Co., 1996. Two hours. Videocassette.

hull-oakes lumber company haer no....

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