After the Fire, Penrith's Mill Will Rise Bigger and Electric
The King Sash, Door & Lumber Co. bought a new sawmill outfit in Idaho and planned a modern Penrith plant with a mill pond and electric lights.
U. S. Reidt, superintendent of the King Sash, Door & Lumber Co., who had charge of the company's mill at Penrith, which burned last August, was at Granite, Idaho, last week, where he went to inspect the plant of the Stack-Gibbs Lumber Co. Mr. Reidt purchased the plant and part of it is now on the way for the new mill at Penrith. The plant has an eight-foot band saw with a capacity of 65,000 feet in 10 hours.
A fine new mill will be built, the timbers for which are now being sawed by the J. L. Long mill. One of the features of the new plant will be a mill pond, which the old mill did not have. It will be lighted by electricity and will be modern in every detail.
“A fine new mill will be built... It will be lighted by electricity and will be modern in every detail.”
Industrial fires were routine in timber towns, but rebuilding with electricity and a mill pond signaled a shift from dangerous steam-era mills to more capital-intensive operations. Penrith's mill is gone today, but the pattern—disaster, consolidation, and a bigger plant—still describes how rural resource towns chase survival.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.