lumbering in 1827

By Gage McKinney Contributing Editor

I N 1824 John Mcloughlin, a large, I grizzled man with an unkempt white beard, florid complexion, bushy white eyebrows and hard, gray eyes, paddled down from the swift headwaters of the Columbia River. Bound for Fort George (now Astoria), headquarters of the Columbia District of the Hudson Bay Co., Mcloughlin had been appointed to manage the company's operations in the entire region and given one principal charge-to make the region selfsupporting and no longer a drain on the comPany.

To this end Mcloughlin, who had the authority of an imperial govemor, established a new fort on the broad northbankof the Columbia River, where he thought his people would be able to grow vegetables, grain and fruit and raise enough cattle to feed themselves. In March L825 a bottle of rum against the flag pole christened Fort Vancouver. Mcloughlin recognized, of course, that it would take more than fruit and vegetables to make the district profiG able. He was counting on the always important fur trade, and, in addition, Mcloughlin discovered lumbering. The idea of developing the region's exceptional timber appealed to him because it would deprive Americans of the opportunity and thus discourage them from settling (always anobjectiveof the British company). In addition, a sawmill would use employees during themonths when the fur trade was slack.

With such arguments Mcloughlin requisitioned sawmill equipment from London, and in October 1827 began the first lumbering operation in the Pacific Northwest on a small creek five miles east of the fort.

That winter Mcloughlin sent Captain Aemilius Sirnpson with the schoonet Cadboro to Monterey to obtain intelligence on potential lumber markets. The captain, a haughty man who wore white gloves while commanding his ship, fulfilled his assignment with his customary thoroughness, retuming with information about the Sandwich (Hawaii) Islands as well as California. Acting quickly on whathe had leamed, Mcloughlin dispatched to the islands a cargo of lumber which sold at prices as high as $100 per thousand. With this eady, inevitable success, a lumbertrade was established. Mclouehlin alsomade trial shipments of lumbei to Lima, Peru; Valparaiso, Chile, and London.

Mcloughlin resisted suggestions of company directors who, after reading his reports far away in Canada and England, had become enthusiastic about lumbering. Based on an immediate knowledge of his sawmill's capabilities and a fair knowledge of the available markets, Mcloughlin ignored a suggestion thathe build a larger mill on the Willamette River. The demand for lumber was limited, he recognized, and competition was developing in Califomia. His manpower was limited, too, especially during fever epidemics when he could not keep the sawmill operatmg.

So, taking a considered approach, the Hudson Bay Co. remained active in lumbering, concentrating on the Sandwich Islands trade, shipping lumber on vessels that were retuming to London. At first the Britishconsul in the islands handled the company's business there, but intime the company tookconhol of its own dealings, employing George Pelly to act as its agent and erecting a two-story office-warehouse in Honolulu.

Within a few years Mcloughlinhad

Story at a Glance

Commercial lumbering's development in Oregon...

Hawaiian lslands markets ...early sawmills in Astoria and Oregon City.

met the objectives of his assignment. His district was supporting itself and even returning profits to London. As a reward the company directors increased Mcloughlin's realm, giving him authority over a territory that stretched from northem California to Alaska.

Always headstrong, and now enormously powerful, Mcloughlin was not to enjoy the support ofthe directors for long, largely because he began to identify himself with the interests of the region rather than with the interests of the company. The company wanted to discourage settlers, but faced with pioneers, particularly missionaries, who arrived with no money and scanty provisions, Mcloughlin had pity for them. He clothed and fed them and often loaned them seed and tools for farming. He gave credit to literally hundreds of settlers, arguing all the time in his official correspondence that it was in the company'sbestinterest. Duringhistenure, gradually and inevitably, more and more Americans arrived.

In the end it was a personal incident that brought Mcloughlin's 30 year career with the company to an end. His son, who was stationed at a primitive Hudson Bay Co. outpost in British Columbia. was murdered by men under his command. Mcloughliri blamed the company for the fact that no one was convicted of the crime. Filled with bittemess and grief, he resigned from the firm in 1846, the same year that the Oregon Country officially became part of the United States.

On his own, Mcloughlin began a career as a merchant and lumber manufacturer in Oregon City, a community 15 miles south of Fort Vancouver, having purchased the Hudson Bay Co. store there and two nearby sawmills. His mills cut about one million feet a year which he marketed through his San Francisco agent, William A. Leidesdorff. By this time a number of American settlers had also established sawmills and there were perhaps 14 operating in Oregon.

Mcloughlin's last years were anything but happy. Brooding on his grievances with the Hudson Bay Co., he became estranged from his family and friends, The American settlers who now dominated the region resented his British manner and continued to identifv him with the British firm that thev called "the monster." Though he applied for American citizenship, unscrupulous men succeeded in invalidating Mcloughlin's land claims, and hundreds of settlers failed to repay his loans.

Mcloughlin, misused in much the way that John Sutter had been misused by settlers in California, literally sobbed over his account books. When he died in 1857 the Pacific Northwest hardly noticed the passing of the man who once ruled the region and founded its principal industry.