Hobbs Wall, a Leading Nam Lumber Industry Celebrat(

T{OBBS

WALI- a leading name in lum. rr ber ior 100 years-celebrates its centennial this montir.

A visit today to Hobbs Wall Lumber Company's handsome modern San Francisco headquarters building reflects the "100 years young" philosophy of the company and its position as one of the 'West's largest wholesale distribution firms. efticiently organized to handle an impres-

Calib Hobbs and David Pomeroy, rvho operated a box factory in San Francisco, sailed to Crescent City and, with obvious appreciation for the great virgin stands of timber, decided to establish a large mill and box factory. J. E. Wall joined the organization and it became known as Hobbs, Wall & Company.

At that time, there was no wharf at Crescent City. Supplies and provisi<lns arrived on steamers and sailing vessels, were unloaded onto lighters, packed inland on mules. ,Lumber itself had previously been milled primarily for domestic consumption, without much thought of export. The earliest shipments of logs were hauled from the mills, piled above the high water mark, rolled out to the Iighters and put aboard the steamers. Later came a wharf, wagon roads artd other solutions to reduce the many steps in handling and shipping that were at first necessary.

By 1909, Hobbs Wall was operating two sawmills, several logging camps, a general store, twelve miles of railroad from Smith River to their wharf and employ. ing three to four hundred people. The Lake Earl Mill had a ten-hour capacity of 40,000 board feet and the Elk Valley Mill at Crescent City 100,000 feet. Logging figures near Lake Earl give some idea of the immense erowth of redwood in the sive volume of redwood, fir, pine, cedar. spruce, hemlock and other species from a growing list of quality western mills. President Michael Coonan and Executive Vice-President William C. Johnson head up an experienced stafi of salesmen working out of the firm's San Francisco and Los Angeles offices. area. From a tract of 160 acres, 35 million feet of redwood (log measure) was cut over a period of several years by working crews averaging ,1,5 to 50 loggers. On some parts of the quarter section the stand run produced I million log feet to the acre.

Hobbs Wall's success in the wholesale field is, in itself, a 2l-year story of steady progress. But, on the occasion of its l00th anniversary, it is interesting to go back to the first 75 years and some of the early events in a history of pioneering, expansion and change.

The story can be said to have begun in Del Norte County, two years before Lincoln became President. Late in 1858, the schooner o'Brother Jonathon" reached Smith River after a trip around the Horn and unloaded a sawmill which was bareed further north and operated for some time until it was returned to Crescent City and eventually put into operation by Hobbs Wall as its first sawmill in the countv.

By the turn of the century, Hobbs Wall was operating mills at Lake Earl and Elk Valley. In 1903, it faced and settled the first strike of mill men and loggers. In May of the same year, Hobbs Wall put its lirst locomotive in operation on its new wharf track. To large holdings of timber-some from Spanish land grantsthe firm added, through acquisition, virtually all the holdings of the lumbering industry in Del Norte County.

As time went on, Hobbs Wall also acquired and operated its own steam schooners especially built for lumber transport, plying between Crescent City, San Francisco and San Pedro. The two most familiar of these were the "Del Norte" and the "Crescent City." It was not always smooth sailing for these intrepid little steamers. Wallace E. Martin, writing in The Guidrc recently, recounts the disappearance in 1930 of the 'oSouth Coast," a l3l-foot schooner. Chartered to carry 100,000 feet of cedar logs from Crescent City to Coos Bay, it sailed out in a low fog and, from later evidence, apparendy struck Rogue River reef near Port Orford and capsized. A Coast Guard cutter re. covered pilot house and steering wheel 20