Here's How They Operote Retoil Yords in Alosko

(Reprinted Courtesy of "This Earth". Magazine

Published by Kaiser Industries)

With gold almost gone as an industry, Alaska is seeking and finding means tb develop huge ,resources of wealth. The objective is a permanent and profitable economic base.

"The' entire picture is changing," said the lean, silverhaired veteran of 30 years of lumber operations in Alaska' Tom Morgan, president of Columbia Lumber Company and key man "in virious other Territorial enterprises, leaned back in his chair to reminisce.

"Wlren my wife and I arrived here in Juneau in 1926, there were only a couple of planks leading from the ship to a few muddy streets. It was a sleepy town. Only 2,500 people. ^

"buJ'what a change now. You'd have to live through it to believe it."

The change he spoke of is very apparent, eve.n to-the "Cheechako/ or newcomer. Against the green backdrop of precipitous Mt. Juneau, the capital city presents a scene of brighi colored nJning fleets, governmentbuildings, paved streeti, lively downtown, abandoned gold mines, lumber milling and hundreds of new homes.

"People are building permanent, year-'round homes now, here and in other pofuiatiott centers," Morgan continu.ed. "Some of the developments you see here were rugged ttmbered areas just a few years ago. It's taken real settlers to do that kind of iob."

Morgan's Coluhbia Lumber Company has had no small part in supplying the construction of housing, commercial ind military pro-jects in and around the cities of Juneau, Sitka, Anchorage and Fairbanks.

Columbia operates retail lumber yards in each of these centers, and siwmills at Juneau, Sitka and Whittier having a combined capacity of 235,000 feet of lumber per- eighthour shift. Greai log! from Tongass National Forest, largest stand of virgin spruce in the world, make Columbia's lumber a desirable export item about the globe.

In keeping with its belief in the permanenc-e .of things Alaskan, Columbia Lumber's retail yards are efficient, wellconstructed buildings. Some thoughts in this were projected by Cliff Robards, yard manager at Anchorage:

"In the '40's, they used to live here in anything--piano boxes, tents and triilers. Now both the number of family units and the sizes of families are growing.

"We've done a lot of business with small contractors for home improvements-singles and small groups of homes. We have an active Operation Home Improvement movement, and a program similiar to FHA I, but with local capital and less red tape.

"Every day we're figuring for people trying to get_a new lease on-life.'I think we are going to have some good years ahead."

Kaiser Gypsum products supplied by Columbia Lumber to both military and civilian construction were "highly acceptable," Robards added.

Like other Alaskan industrial leaders, Columbia Lumber's Tom Morgan has seen the need-and the opportunity -to go into other lines of endeavor, to help provide.the divers-ity necessary to any young economy. To that end he has a large interest in the operations of Alaska Coastal Airline an-d Alaska Investors and Loan Corporation'

"We saw the Territory collapse after World War II,"