Life at the Port Discovery Mill
A dispatch from the bustling lumber town of Port Discovery, where 200 men—including Chinese and Indigenous laborers—keep one of the Pacific Coast's largest mills running day and night.
The mill at Port Discovery is the chief object of interest and value, said to be the largest of its kind on the Pacific Coast. It has the capacity of sawing 100,000 feet of lumber every 24 hours. There are employed, on an average, the year round, about 200 men, including 15 or 20 Chinamen and a few Indians. The lumbering enterprise was begun at this point about 22 years ago, and since that time operations have been comparatively incessant until its present magnificent dimensions were reached. The population claimed for this place is about 1,000, though there are perhaps 800. Just back 'on the hill,' a slight rise of 25 to 30 feet above the mill-spit, there are about 38 neat, commodious-looking houses, occupied for the most part by families. The school at this point must not be passed unnoticed; Mr. Jones, the teacher, has abundant qualifications for the peculiar avocation of training young ideas, as those under his charge will show. About 50 pupils come here daily to delve and code with problems, bolus, etc.
“The mill at this point must not be passed unnoticed; Mr. Jones, the teacher, no doubt, has abundant qualifications for the peculiar avocation of training young ideas.”
Port Discovery was once a massive industrial hub, but today it is a quiet, rural area with little trace of the sprawling mill that defined its existence in the 1870s. The mention of the diverse workforce—including Chinese and Indigenous laborers—highlights the often-overlooked demographic reality of the early Pacific Northwest timber industry.
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