Timeline: Weyerhaueser's efforts to take over Willamette Industries
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WEYERHAEUSER
1858: Frederick Weyerhaeuser, a 24-year-old German immigrant, leases his first sawmill and lumberyard in Rock Island, Ill.
1900: Weyerhaeuser and 15 partners buy 900,000 acres of timberland in Washington state from the Northern Pacific Railway, forming the Weyerhaeuser Timber Co.
1931: Opens first pulp mill in Longview, entering the pulp-and-paper business.
1959: Drops "Timber" from name, reflecting its diversification.
1963: Lists shares on New York and Pacific stock exchanges.
1969: Enters real-estate business with California development.
1971: Moves from Tacoma to Federal Way.
1997: Steve Rogel becomes president and chief executive; he adds the chairman's title two years later.
1999: Buys Canada's MacMillan Bloedel for $2.45 billion.
2000: Buys Idaho-based TJ International for $715 million.
WILLAMETTE INDUSTRIES
1906: Louis Gerlinger, H.L. Pittock and F.W. Leadbetter pool money to buy the Cone Lumber in Dallas, Ore., renaming it Willamette Valley Lumber.
1927: Installs first commercial chipper on the West Coast to make wood chips for papermaking.
1935: Buys nearby Corvallis Lumber.
1948: William Swindells Sr., who married Gerlinger's granddaughter, takes over as president.
1950: Buys interest in Santiam Lumber.
1967: Willamette Valley and Santiam Lumber, along with several smaller companies, combine to form Willamette Industries.
1980: Willamette buys Woodward-Walker Lumber in Louisiana, adding 50,000 acres of timberland and two plywood mills.
1990: Willamette begins a string of acquisitions by buying Penntech Papers. Over the next decade it also buys Bohemia Inc. (1991), 11 Boise Cascade corrugated-products plants (1992), Mead's Kingsport, Tenn., paper mill (1995), 1.1 million acres of Hanson PLC timberland in the West and South and a fiberboard plant in Ireland (1996), and a medium-density fiberboard plant in France (1998).
1995: Steve Rogel, Willamette's president and chief operating officer, succeeds William Swindells Jr. as CEO.
1997: Rogel quits Willamette to lead Weyerhaeuser.
Sources: Company reports, Hoover's