A CENTURY PLUS OF WORKING TOGETHER BACKS UP CURRENT MOVES

TWO OF the most storied and famous r institutions of the American Wes! the lumber industry and the railroads, find themselves going into the last third of the century with as much in common and still as much in partnership as they were a century ago.

While both continue to work in the traditional areas, other parallel courses of action between the two have undergone strong development in the last decade.

Probably the most outstanding in the areas of new activity for the two is their active financial and developmental interest in land.

The first major developer of western lands was most often the railrqads. The lumber companies, while also owning tremendous tracts, tended, probably by reason of their location, to limit their actions to company towns and the like.

Times changed, though, and lumber companies found that the lands they owned were now close to the sprawling cities or

Sfory dI d Gfonce

Two old business compatriots find land a profitable sideline...ventures and efforts often overlap close working relationship rematns.

new resorts. Sometimes it turned out to be more profitable to develop or rent the land than it was to log and re-plant and re-seed. Occasionally it was possible to control development so that the buildings that went up on the land became a captive market for the firm's building products. It was a bright new opportunity that wasn't lost for long on the sharper marketing men.

Pope & Talbot have been active devel' opers of recreational lands in the Pacific Northwest as have U.S. Plywood-Champion Papers with their lands along Nevada and California's Lake Tahoe.

The railroads likewise find t}at land, both previously owned and acquired, can be as valuable to them as similar ventures have been for the lumber companies. Sometimes the two work even more closely together and end up as landlord and tenant.

Roseburg Lumber Co. and the Willamette Lumber Co., for example, both chose to relocate their plants on Southern Pacific land beside the SP right-of-way in Oregon.

A similar pattern is clearly discernible throughout the W'est as other railroads take an active part in industrial parks.

A current master of the art is the Union Pacific Railroad. Their acquisition two years ago of 309 acres in the ,Carson-Dominguez area, in the middle of I"os Angeles, is a good example of the savvy tactics they, have shown.

C0l{TlllUED cooperation between lumber industry and railroads, dating back more than a century, is seen in loading of specially built 62' car. UP alone is adding more than 300 of these new cars this year.

The UP land, beside its obvious commercial value, has a remarkable history.

Ihe Dominguez Estate Co., the previous owner, is one o{ the three corporate descendents of Juan Jose Dominguez, a soldier in the Spanish colonial army who in 1784 received a grant of some 76,000 acres of land from the governor of Alta California. In 1825 the rancho was inherited by Juan Jose's three grand-nephews, one oI whomo Manuel Dominguez, gradually purchased his brothers' shares. Greatly re.

LlKE THE lumber industry railroads develop their own lands, seeking tenants and the like. This parcel, belonging to the Union Pacific, is close to both deep water ports and the mass market of Los Angeles.

duced portions were inherited in lB82 by Manuel's six daughters, who in IglO began placing their holdings in management corporations.

One of the sisters, Sra. Maria de los Reyes Dominguez de Franciq was reported dissatisfied with the share allotted to her. If true, she was mollified when oil was discovered on her land in 1922 and provided her, within three years, with the highest income of any woman in America.

The original rancho also included Rattlesnake Island" once little more than salt marsh and a catchall for debris and snakes washed down on San Gabriel River floods. It was acquired from the Dominguez family for a terminal site in 1890 by the Los Angeles Terminal Railwan a forerunner of Union Pacific in California. Renamed Terminal Island, the property that was considered worthless is now laced with tracks, teems with shipping activity and the Wilmington field is the U.S.'s largest in current rate of oil production.

That Carson-Domingue'z parcel, left over from the placid past of colonial Spain, is quiet no longer. Surrounded on all sides by freeways, just four miles from the deep water ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach Harbors, plus being smack dab in the middle of the megalopolis of Los Angeleso the area is a natural for firrns ryho want to be where the action is. Watson Plvwood Co. is one of the more recent tenants to

The UP has a staff of specialists in zoning, structural and civil engineering, taxation and freight rates and all the rest to advise industrial site customers who are rightly awed by the thought of moving.

Besides the Carson-Dominguez park, UP has 2300 acres of plant and warehouse sites along its main line between L.A. and Riverside.

Elsewhere in the West, more than 4000 acres have been laid out in 28 industrial districts. They are in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Coloradq Wyoming and Nevada with large concentrations of available sites in the Seattle-Tacoma, Portland, Salt Lake City-Ogden and Denver areas.

While the railroad companies have expanded their land activities, first things come first, end they haven't neglected new rolling stock for their old customers.

Since their introduction of bulkhead flatcars several years ago, UP has added nearly 1100. These 56- and 67-foot cars are in constant demand for shipment of packaged lumber, plywood and other building materials.

In the Northwest, wide door boxcars are most popular, favor being dictated by receivers using mechanized unloading. UP has more than 15,000 flug, wide and double-door 40-, 50- and 60-foot boxcars in service.

Cut stock shippers often request boxcars installed with load restraining devices. They have found tlrat interior fixtures, along with cushion underframes, are efiective in cutting damage to lading in transport.

So the close working arrangement between the lumber industry and the railroad continues, bolstered by a successful past, into a second century of western growth.