The Million-Dollar Timber Grab
A newly formed corporation has consolidated massive timber holdings on the Tacoma Eastern line, signaling a shift in regional resource ownership.
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 secret of the recent trip of Marrin Hughitt, Jr., son of the president of the Northwestern railway system, to Tacoma came out yesterday afternoon when it was announced that $1,000,000 worth of timber on the Tacoma Eastern and the holdings of the Tide Water Lumber company had been taken over by the newly organized Monarch Lumber company. When Mr. Hughitt was here, he and Henry S. Royce went up on the Tacoma Eastern for a couple of days and it was hinted that a big timber deal was on. The deal was later closed and out of it a new company has been born and a great lumber mill will be erected at Kapowsin or some other point along the line.
“The buying of this rich timber by men deep in the Northwestern railway is considered by some as a pretty good indication that the Northwestern is shaping things to get into Tacoma.”
Tacoma’s industrial history was built on the rapid consolidation of natural resources by powerful railway interests. This deal illustrates the high-stakes 'growth machine' era where railroad expansion and timber extraction dictated the city's economic geography.
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