Hard Times in Paradise: Coos Bay, Oregon

3 / The "Big Mill" and Its World

CHAPTER 3 The "Big Mill" and Its World The most extensive holdings of the C. A. Smith Timber Company are tributary to Coos Bay by water and rail, including the timber in Coos, Curry and Douglas counties, of which the company owns about 180,000 acres, containing perhaps 18,000,000,000 feet.! When fire destroyed an old sawmilling facility belonging to the Georgia-Pacific Corporation in the spring of 1984, it marked the end of an era in the history of lumber manufacturing on Coos Bay. For that building complex, in the process of being dismantled for scrap metal, was at one time the envy of lumber manufacturers worldwide. Known as the Big Mill, the plant was the center of the fully integrated C. A. Smith operations, a facility once reputed to be a "sensation and a revolution in the manufacture of lumber."2 But the Big Mill was even more; it was the bay country's largest employer from the time it began sawing lumber on February 29, 1908, until the new Weyerhaeuser mill opened in 1951 As such, the Big Mill was the center of industrial activity for an area that extended to neighboring Douglas and Curry counties. Its network of production included miles of logging railroad, several logging camps, extensive booming and rafting facilities, waterfront docks for loading lumber, and company ships to transport the rough-cut lumber to the C. A. Smith finishing mill at Bay Point, California. Although the antiquated Simpson operation at North Bend limped on for a few years and other plants opened on the bay, they all paled beside the Big Mill and its supply and transportation system. The C. A. Smith work force also gave a particular cast to the population on the bay; by 1910 there was a greater percentage of Scandinavians, especially Swedes, living in Marshfield than any other town in the county. The bloodlines of those early comers still linger. Helene Stack Bower's father came from Minnesota to direct the construction of the Big Mill. Her father, like others, came from north Minneapolis and lived in a boarding house until he sent for his family in 1914. Helen's nephew, Chappie McCarthy (one of the last independent loggers operating in southwestern Oregon), remembers proudly that his Minnesota grandfather had built mills for C. A. Smith and others "all over the damn country." The Big Mill was the grandest and for several years "the largest single head rig mill in the world." Canadian-born William E. Major came to Coos Bay in 1906 with his 40 THE "BIG MILL" AND ITS WORLD 41 father who worked as millwright for C. A. Smith. He remembers that the new plant "was so big that it had its own construction crew." Cliff Thorwald points out that his father and other Minnesotans did "all the big, heavy iron work for the Big Mill." That was a considerable feat with a steam-powered flywheel twenty feet in diameter, huge shafts running the length of the building, and "many, many big leather belts."3 The construction of the Big Mill was a large and well-planned operation. The old E. B. Dean sawmill cut lumber for the new buildings and experienced Minnesota millwrights directed the construction of the most modern and efficient lumber manufacturing plant of its time. When it began sawing in 1908, the C. A. Smith operation employed 250 workers in the plant on Coos Bay and another 350 in seven large logging camps. Before the year was out, Smith added a second shift of "experienced mill men ... brought out from Minnesota." That pushed total production for the two ten-hour shifts to an average of 500,000 board feet a day; and more new machinery was on the way.4 As long as the marketing end of the operation held up, economic conditions on the bay held steady. To increase the capacity of the Coos Bay operation, Smith ordered the remodeling of the old E. B. Dean mill. It was designed to cut spruce, cedar, and the finer grades of fir, and newspapers reported that the plant would be able to saw 150,000 feet a day and employ about 100 men, which would of course /I add to the volume of business here./I The Smith company also announced "improvements" in the Big Mill with the installation of a new waste burner; hitherto, wood wastes had been ground up and used to fill mudflats in the vicinity of the...