The Ghost City of Ainslie
A grand promise of an industrial metropolis in Lewis County ended in a ruinous collapse for investors and creditors alike.
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 sawmill at Ainslie, together with the townsite, was sold by the sheriff last week. The purchaser is Mr. W. McIntosh, representing the London and San Francisco bank. Ainslie is in the southern part of this county, and last year was the scene of part of the Napoleonic operations of the Ainslie Lumber Company. A splendid townsite was laid out, electric lights were put in, sewers and waterworks were projected, and one of the finest lumber and furniture manufacturing plants on the Coast was put in. A logging railroad, splendidly equipped, was built out into the timber several miles. This, it was given out, was to be completed to Astoria immediately. Fabulous tales were told of the wealth of the company and of the industries it was proposed to establish at Ainslie in order to build up a great city. Suddenly the company collapsed, and a startling story of the methods by which its officers had swindled banks and wholesale houses out of many hundred thousands of dollars was made public. The Portland offices of the company were closed and the Ainslie concern went into the hands of a receiver. The property which was sold the other day will probably not pay creditors 10 cents on the dollar.
“Fabulous tales were told of the wealth of the company and of the industries it was proposed to establish at Ainslie in order to build up a great city.”
Ainslie serves as a classic example of Washington's boom-and-bust cycle, where speculative townsites were peddled with grand promises of infrastructure that never materialized. Much like modern real estate hype, the 'fabulous tales' of wealth often collapsed when the underlying financial house of cards fell, leaving local creditors with pennies on the dollar.
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