Smith Pays Walker Interests Ten Million Dollars For Timber--One Ot Biggest Deals ln History

When the Ralph L. Smith Lumber Company, of Kansas City, purchased one billion one hundred and fifty million feet of California Pine timber from the Walker interests recently, the ,ten million dollar purchase price constituted one of the biggest timber deals in all lumber history, from the dollar standpoint. Very few ten million dollar timber sales have ever been made. Many sales of greater footage have been known in the history of the industry, but not in the price involved.

This is the biggest timber buy that has been registered

Ralph L. Smith Lumba Company Becomes California Oferation Of Major Size And lmportance

Recent mention was made in these columns of the purchase by the Ralph L. Smith Lumber Company, of Kansas City, of the Deschutes Lumber Company and all its holdings, at Anderson, California. The Deschutes properties consist of a single band sawmill that runs two shifts and cuts three and a quarter million feet of lumber a month, and a large stand of timber. This purchase was only one of a series of important moves now under way that will make the Ralph L. Smith Lumber Company one of the largest and most important operators in California lumber territory.

This company is a family relation to the veteran M. R. Smith Lumber & Shingle Company, of Seattle, which has been an important lu'mber and shingle factor in the Northwest for two generations, and is today one of the world's largest producers of Red Cedar shingles. Recently the M. R. Smith Lumber & Shingle Company, and Mr. Paul Smith, who heads that concern, joined forces to buy a substantial interest in the Ralph L. Smith Lumber Company, and with this enlarged financial structure they are proceeding with a very ambitious program of expansion.

Already this concern owns and operates a moulding plant in Klamath Falls, Oregon, sawmills in Canby, California, and a box factory in Alturas, California. Buying the Deschutes Lumber Company was the first ex- since the Long-Bell Lumber Company bought ten billion feet of Fir from Weyerhaeuser at Longview, Washington, about twenty-five years ago. pansion step. Now they are proceeding to enlarge the former Deschutes plant at AnderSon. The sawmill will be doubled in size and capacity as fast as equipment can be installed. There was no planer or dry kilns at this mill, so they are now building a very large planer, and will then immediately construct a very large set of stearn dry kitns. The planer and kilns will have sufficient capacity to handle the output of the doubled mill at Anderson, and in addition the production of various other sawmills in that vicinity that have no 'planer or kiln facilities. They plan to turn out one hundred million feet of lumber a year at this point when their rebuilt plant is completed.

The Walker interests once owned well over twenty billion feet of standing Pine timber in Northern California, including the tract adjacent to their great mill at Westwood, which they have since sold. This was by far the greatest Pine timber stand ever owned by one concern. Most of it has now been sold.

They have bought from the Walker interests, of Cali' fornia, formerly owners of the Red River Lumber Company, one billion one hundred and fifty million feet of Pine timber, the purchase price announced being about ten million dollars. This timber is located near Redding, California.

They now own in the vicinity of the Anderson mill about 1,300,000,000 feet of timber, of which fifty per cent is Ponderosa and Sugar Pine.

Add the enlarged Anderson operation to the previous operations of the Ralph L. Smith Lumber Company, and you have a very big lumber business. The general sales office of the company is in Kansas City, in charge of Mr. J. A. Lowe, Jr. The sale of the various products of this concern will hereafter be divided, part being sold by the M. R. Smith Lumber & Shingle Company, in Seattle, and part by the Ralph L. Smith Lumber Company office in Kansas City.