The Great Timber Rush: Seattle's Lumber Boom of 1892
A record-breaking export season for Puget Sound mills reveals the friction between burgeoning local production and the crippling cost of rail freight.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The shipment of lumber from Seattle has been greater since the first of this year than ever before in the history of the city. The record kept by the port warden shows that thirty vessels have sailed since January 1, carrying 9,500,000 feet of lumber. The Stimson Mill Company is the heaviest shipper, followed by the Western Mill Company, the Snoqualmie Mill Company, and the Fremont Milling Company. C.D. Stimson noted that while demand was good, prices remained low and the company was focusing almost entirely on its shipping business, largely to San Francisco. A.H. Grant, assistant manager of the Western Mill Company, noted that business was increasing, but that shipping prices were only slightly better than local prices. He lamented that high rail freight rates practically shut out Puget Sound lumber from the Montana and Idaho markets, expressing hope that when the Great Northern line is completed, it will lower the costs to give them a chance at the Eastern trade.
“The high freight rates practically shut out Puget Sound lumber anyhow.”
In 1892, Seattle lumbermen were waiting for the Great Northern Railway to solve their distribution bottlenecks and provide access to national markets. Today, Seattle's logistics economy remains centered on global export and transit efficiency, yet continues to wrestle with the volatile balance between local industry needs and external infrastructure costs.
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