Pacific Lumber & Wood Company

California / Logging / Pacific Lumber & Wood Company

History

By Andrew Brandon

In 1868, Thomas Jones built a sawmill along the Central Pacific Railroad at Camp 18. The mill was sold to Charles Bragg and Filman Folsom, who operated it as the Pacific Lumber & Wood Company. Logs were harvested north and driven down to the Little Truckee River and Prosser Creek to the mill.

Fred Burckhalter joined the partnership in the early 1870s. He served as general manager. Logging operations were shifted into Juniper Plateau to the south of Clinton. The company joined forces with James Clelland to build the Juniper Creek Flume Company. V-flume was constructed from upper Juniper Creek down to the Truckee River, allowing for the movement of cordwood and railroad ties.

Logging was initially done with oxen and wagons, which hauled logs to the top of a bluff overlooking Clinton (formerly Camp 18). They were then sent down a 1600 ft long chute to the mill pond below. This arrangement was suitable early on, but as the distance from the woods to the chute began to increase.

Grass Valley Union - March 7, 1874.
Sliding Logs.-The Truckee Republican tells this: “Messrs. Bragg & Folsom, at Camp 18, have had men at work nearly all Winter cutting saw logs and hauling them to their chute or slide on the summit of the mountain opposite their mill. The loggers have had from three to six feet of snow to contend with, but by great exertions have been able to keep their logging roads open. The chute, down which the logs descend to the river, is about 1,600 feet long and very steep. The first snows rendered the chute so slippery, and so lessened the friction, that the logs slide down with such rapidity that many of them “bounced” out of the groove and failed to reach the river. To remedy this difficulty heavy iron spikes were driven into the logs composing the shut at various places. The spikes would be left with a project of an inch or so above the logs into which they were driven. Then the saw logs making the descent would have their bark caught on the spikes, thus retarding their velocity somewhat. As the snow fell deeper, however, the precaution at keeping the logs in the chute proved unnecessary. Every fresh snow that fell in the chute was plowed out by the descending logs and banked up on either side, until now the snow is solidly packed five or six feet higher than the chute so that it is impossible for a log to jump out of the deep cut thus formed. The rapidity with which they make the descent of 1,6000 feet is a sight worth witnessing. Greased lightning is nothing compared to it. 

On March 28, 1878 the Pacific Lumber & Wood Co. incorporated. The company began construction on a railroad from the log chute to the woods. In August they purchased a second hand Porter 0-4-0T locomotive from the Sutro Tunnel Company of Dayton Nevada. The locomotive received a new wooden cab and a diamond stack.

The railroad reached six miles long. As the railroad built south from the bluff it reached a meadow where a switchback was constructed to allow the railroad to reach Murphy’s Meadow, near the Nevada state line. In 1891 a second locomotive arrived from Baldwin, a 0-6-0T named “Dewey”.

The timber supply began to dwindle in 1893. At the same time, the Truckee Lumber Co. found itself with plenty of timberland, but no railroad connection to it. In June 1893 the construction of a new railroad began, the Donner & Tahoe Railroad. The first ten miles of the railroad from the chute southward were removed and a new line was temporarily constructed from Murphy’s Meadow down to Klondike Meadows was constructed.

From Klondike Meadows the new Donner & Tahoe Railroad was constructed along the Martis Valley down to Truckee where the logs were dumped into the Truckee Lumber Co. mill pond. The new line was completed on July 13, 1893 and the Clinton mill was dismantled.

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Bibliography

Beckstrom, Paul and Braun, David (1991). Swayne Lumber Company. Seattle: Pacific Fast Mail Company.

Myrick, David F. (1962). Railroads Of Nevada and Eastern California: Volume 1. Berkeley: Howell-North Books. ISBN 978-0-87417-193-8.Recently reprinted by University of Nevada

Farrell, Mallory Hope (2012). Rails Around Lake Tahoe. Berkeley: Signature Press.

California / Logging / Pacific Lumber & Wood Company