Best viewed at 1024 X 793 screen resolution or greater........

Index

Westfir, located at milepost 582.7 on the Southern Pacific, was the location of the lumber mill Western Lumber Company, established in 1923. Western Lumber Co. received the contract to clear the timber for the new railroad right-of-way between Pryor and Cascade Summit which was the basis of forming the mill. The name later became the Westfir Lumber Co., and lastly, the Edward Hines Lumber Co.. During the year of 1966 the mill shipped nearly 2900 carloads of wood products via the Southern Pacific in the form of lumber, plywood, and woodchips.
Index




As with any industry, the Western Lumber Co. went through changes to remain competitive in an ever growing lumber products market. New methods were adapted for removing logs from the woods, and processing them at the mill. In the early days, manual hand tools were used and the steam donkey could be seen just about anywhere at a logging site.


The railroad proved to be satisfactory for hauling logs out of the North Fork drainage up until the late 40's which followed the North Fork Willamette River from Westfir to Camp 5, roughly 12 miles from Westfir. At Eighth Creek, WLC utilized an incline to reach Huckleberry Flat and the large timber that it provided.

After the railroad, the log truck was the key method for hauling logs out of the woods to the mill pond, where they were dumped and routed to the mill. via the river

To compete with an ever growing market for lumber products, the last owner of the mill, Edward Hines, installed the plywood plant. Due to the location of the mill and having very little room to expand, the veneer plant was located on the east side of the mill complex near the Southern Pacific trainoreder office. The Plywood plant was located on the west side of the mill complex and was also the last to cease operations due to fire.

Below you will find links to various photo sections relating to each portion of the mill. The last section deals with the logging operations and includes the logging railroad owned and operated by the mill.







Edward Hines Company News Letter


A little piece of information about this website:
The space for this website is free unlimited space provided by Railfan.net. One of they key issues with this website for the last 3 years is the speed at which the images load to the viewers computer. It does not matter whether or not the viewer has a high speed connection or not, it is slow and it is on the server's end of the connection.

I've viewed roughly 30 other Railfan.net websites on various computers and connections, either the free unlimited sites like mine or the sites that people are paying for and all were slow loading as well which leads me to believe that Railfan.net is where the bottleneck is.

Many of the photos on this website range from 50Kb in size to 150Kb in size. I have done several tests pages to test loading speeds for small photos and large photos and each page was slow to load.

If the time comes when Railfan.net upgrades their system, then the photos will load much faster. Until that time comes I ask that the viewers please refrain from sending me e-mail about how slow the photos load. I'm set-up for free unlimited space and for a website this size, it's a great deal, and there are no pop-ups, which is a plus.

So, to the viewers of this webpage, I apologize for the slowness of image loading.

I would like to thank the following for their assistance and contributions to this webpage:


Railfan.net, Paul Ehinger, Martin E. Hansen, Larry Castle for the grunt work with the scanner, Lindy Oleson, Oakridge Museum, and The Westfir Lodge.
All photos within this web page are the sole property of Joel Ashcroft, except where noted on the photo credit. These photos MAY NOT be reproduced at any time without permission of Joel Ashcroft or the photo owner as indicated by the photo credit stamped on the photo. If you see a photo on this website that is yours, or you know who it belongs to and you know it should not be posted, e-mail me ASAP so as to remove it or provide proper credit where needed.

This webpage is in no way affiliated with or funded by the Oakridge Museum.

I do not make any profit from this webpage and that's how it will remain! The purpose of this webpage is to provide a source of valuable historical information at no charge. This website is in no way affiliated with the former Southern Pacifc Railroad, Union Pacific Railroad or the Edward Hines Lumber Co.

Thank you!!!
Joel




Send me MAIL


© Joel Ashcroft