The Pride of Mount Vernon Went Up in Smoke
A $20,000 shingle mill — the finest on Puget Sound — burned to the ground in a single afternoon, throwing sixty men out of work and leaving a receiver and a Seattle mortgage house to sort through the ashes.
Mount Vernon, April 30.—Special.—The shingle mill of the Mount Vernon Shingle and Lumber Company, the largest in the county and one of the best mills on the Sound, has burned this afternoon, entailing a loss of over $15,000.
The fire was discovered at about 2 o'clock in the dry house, heated by a Sturtevant dryer. Almost instantaneously the flames spread through the long building and into the mill, the workmen barely having time to escape with their lives. In an incredibly short time the entire mill was ablaze.
The volunteer fire department turned out promptly, but the fire had gained such headway that nothing could be done, and the mill with all its machinery, together with the dry house and warehouse with its shingles, was consumed. The insurance is $15,000, with possibly another thousand written for Williams & Groat, at Seattle. Two thousand is in the Liverpool, London and Globe in favor of Williams & Groat, $3,000 in the Manchester Fire in favor of Receiver Pape, and some in the Palatine, on the stock of shingles. Williams & Groat held a mortgage on the plant and the First National Bank of this city also had $4,000 on the plant, secured by a mortgage and personal security. The shingles burned were valued at $1,500, of which Bogart & Briden, loggers, lose $300 and Brink & Bergen $300 for logs furnished.
The mill was the pride of the city, and said by many to be the best-constructed mill in the state. It was equipped with two double blockers, a drag saw and a dry house for 2,000,000 shingles. It was built in 1893 by local capitalists, chief of whom were William Dale, H. P. Down, Otto Clement, George E. Brand and others. It cost $20,000. About two months ago the company went into the hands of Receiver Fred E. Pape and has been running since on a cash basis. About sixty men were employed in the mill and camps. Insurance on the mill was only 7½ per cent, while on the other mills the rate is 13 per cent. Williams & Groat's loss will probably be $6,000 or $7,000.
“The mill was the pride of the city, and said by many to be the best-constructed mill in the state.”
Skagit Valley timber towns like Mount Vernon were built and rebuilt on shingle and lumber mills, and a single dry-house fire could wipe out a town's largest payroll in an afternoon. The detail that the mill was already in receivership — and insured at barely half the going rate — is a reminder that the 1890s boom was as fragile as it was loud. Today's Skagit County economy still argues over timber, land and what replaces the mills.
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