Taming the Wishkah River
Massive new dams are set to revolutionize the lumber industry in Chehalis County.
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.
Logging heretofore in Chehalis county has been done under many difficulties, and loggers had to put their logs in the streams and wait for the winter rains to take them out. Two dams are now being built on the Wishkah that will mark a new era in logging. The one of most importance is being built by Frank Miller at the falls of the Wishkah, twenty-eight miles north of Aberdeen. It is built between solid rock walls and is forty-six feet high, having thirty-four feet of a dead head and twelve feet flushing. There are four twelve-feet flushing gates and one fourteen-feet gate. Ordinarily, two of the flushing gates being raised will be sufficient to drive logs down to tide water. Another dam of similar construction is being built on the West Fork of the Wishkah by C. W. Blackwell. Both dams represent an outlay of about $10,000 and will prove a success in every way.
“Two dams are now being built on the Wishkah that will mark a new era in logging in this part of Chehalis county.”
This reflects the transformation of the Pacific Northwest landscape to serve the timber industry, a cycle of industrializing river systems that deeply altered Washington's ecology and shaped the local economy for a century.
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