Washington -- Sawdust Memories: A Tour Of Our Old Timber Towns

LONGVIEW, Wash. - Though their steam whistles have long been silent, some of the Pacific Northwest's old logging and sawmill towns have held on. Others gave way long ago to wreckers, rot and blackberry vines.

Nevertheless, silent echoes remain of the loud laughter and curses of men who logged by hand or endured the screams of mill saws cutting into old-growth fir. A visit to these once-thriving company towns is like walking into the past with little more than the imagination as a guide.

However, there are ways to flesh out the imagination, one of which is reading Kenneth A. Erickson's 144-page book "Lumber Ghosts: A Travel Guide to the Historic Lumber Towns of the Pacific Northwest" (Pruett: 1994, paperback, $16.95).

A native Oregonian, Erickson is a professor of geography at the University of Colorado in Boulder and writes that the book is the result of 30 years of travel and research. He takes the reader through six trips - from Bellingham to the Oregon coast - complete with the number of miles between points and the number of board feet that each sawmill would cut in a day.

One of the routes is the 200-odd mile Nisqually-Cowlitz Loop, which "covers basically the lowlands between the Willapa Hills and the Cascade Mountains of southwestern Washington," and where prosperity was greatest between 1890 and 1930.

Whether one begins north at Centralia or south at Vader and Ryderwood, the journey is a chance to see small-town America away from the Interstate-5 corridor and reveals how fragile a one-product economy can be even when timber was plentiful.

Starting at Vader, one can see how a bedroom community has evolved from a bustling town that once had three sawmills, plenty of stores and a train depot. Continue on state Route 506 to Ryderwood, the town that R.A. Long built so loggers, married or single, could go home at night instead of living in isolated lumber camps.

Ryderwood is worth a stop for a snack or lunch at the store and cafe, which is the hub of what has been a retirement community since the early 1950s. There's still a boardwalk but no trace of the loggers' caulked boots that once tread nearly everywhere.

Compare the architecture of the newer homes with the ones built by the Long-Bell Lumber Co. in an effort to avoid the sameness of other company towns.

Doubling back to the Vader-Winlock Road, turn left (north) to Winlock.

Platted in 1875 and incorporated in 1883, Winlock was the home of "the first big inland railroad sawmills in the Pacific Northwest," he says. Its growth coincided with the completion of the last continental link of the Northern Pacific Railroad from Kalama to Tacoma.

Now head north on state Route 603 for three miles and then go east on U.S. 12 to Lenora Road and left (north) to Onalaska. Here, the Carlisle-Pennell Lumber Company cut 300,000 board feet a day, and "about 1,000 citizens (were) housed in 175 single-family homes, 40 small bunkhouses and seven long, dormitory-like bunkhouses."

All that's left of the big mill that was built in 1918 is a smokestack between the log pond, now Carlisle Lake, and some decaying and dangerous concrete floors and foundations.

"Beset by diminishing log supplies, faltering national markets and union organizers, (W.A.) Carlisle closed the mill during the Depression," and it later was sold for scrap during World War II, Erickson says.

The 24-mile drive east on state Route 508 from Onalaska to Morton is a highlight of the loop. Fields and farms become bigger, and once past Mile Post 19, you're in the woods. Though many of the high hills where the Cascade Mountains begin have been logged over, others have been replanted - a reminder that timber still is a crop in this age of diversifying economies.

Far from a ghost town, "Morton is the present center of logging in the upper Cowlitz River area and also the center of Appalachian mountaineers who migrated here from the Kentucky-West Virginia area between 1920 and 1940," Erickson writes.

Like Eatonville farther north, Morton has an aura of stability and determination about it. Its spirit seems summed up in the figure of "Ole," a statue of an old-time logger that stands beyond the downtown area where the barbershop also sells fishing tackle.

Continue nine miles north on state Route 7 until you come to a junction with Mineral Hill Road, where a sign points to Mineral to the right. A fashionable resort town at

the turn of the century, Mineral evolved into "a boisterous lumber town of about 1,000 persons" by 1920.

A large steam donkey engine on display by Mineral Lake marks the western part of the old mill site. There's a campground and boat launch here, and there must be plenty of fish because cormorants abound. Nearby resorts cater to anglers, including Mineral Lake Lodge - a log building with a three-sided porch.

Stay on Mineral Hill Road to state Route 7 to Elbe, now the home of the Mount Rainier Scenic Railway. From here, go 10 miles and turn right onto state Route 161 to Eatonville. In the town's Tall Timber Restaurant are photos that were taken when the long-abandoned Eatonville Lumber Co. reigned supreme.

To reach the mill site, take Marshall Avenue, the main street, southward, but don't get too close to the treacherous, rotting structures that are caving in with age. The conical "wigwam" waste burner remains intact.

Near the mill site is the old company neighborhood, its row houses still in use. The former owner's home is now a bed and breakfast. A public park is on the other side of the mill pond.

Double back from Eatonville to state Route 7 and then turn left (west) onto state Route 702 to McKenna, located at the junction with state Route 507. Erickson says, "Despite the failure of the mill in the 1930s, McKenna is probably the best-preserved lowland company town of the 20th century."

The McKenna Lumber Co. mill site lies 70 yards east of the highway. The company store now is a tavern and the old bunkhouse a nursing home. Most of the houses remain in use, including those of the owner and mill officials.

Last on the loop before ending at Centralia-Chehalis is Bucoda on state Route 507. First settled in 1854, Bucoda was the site of the first territorial penitentiary, and by 1890 it boasted the largest payroll between Portland and Tacoma.

Aside from some coal mining, the Mutual Lumber Co. dominated the scene until 1944 when it was sold and became a planing mill. It was closed in 1954 and later was destroyed by fire. A housing development is slated to rise at the south end of town, where there is a commemorative sign.

All that's left of the main street along the railroad tracks is a grocery store, a tavern and cafe and the solemn, concrete Odd Fellows Hall where the second floor has been condemned.

Bucoda native Neil Corcoran, 58, is the author of "Bucoda: A Heritage of Sawdust and Leg Irons." Still a resident, he says the town's downhill slide "saddens me a lot" because the community spirit is gone.

"It was like an extended family because everyone was in one way or another connected to the sawmill operation or the coal mines," he says. "Everybody knew everyone else, even their kids and their pets. . . . If you were at one end of town and did something you shouldn't, you were treated the same as if your own parents were there."

Today, Bucoda is primarily a bedroom community.