Weyerhaeuser Eyes the Confluence
Timber giants weigh the mouth of the Snake River for a massive new mill site as regional water transport becomes a reality.
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 Weyerhaeuser interests, owning twenty billion feet of white pine timber in the Clearwater district of Idaho, are looking for a mill site either at the mouth of the Snake River in Washington or on the Clearwater River in Idaho, now that all-year transportation facilities on the Snake and Columbia rivers are assured by the work of the Columbia and Snake River Waterways Association. This will mean that practically the entire output of the proposed mill will descend the Columbia and pass over the bar to the high seas. These facts were made known in a letter received by Wallace R. Struble, secretary and treasurer of the association, written by S. V. Winslow, captain of the dredge Umatilla, which is engaged in blasting obstructions from the rivers.
“The strongest obstacle in the way of interior development will be lifted.”
This article captures the era when the Columbia and Snake rivers were being fundamentally re-engineered to industrialize the Pacific Northwest. While the Weyerhaeuser mill didn't end up precisely at the Snake's confluence, the push to turn these rivers into a massive conveyor belt for timber and grain remains a point of intense civic and environmental debate today.
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