Puget Sound’s almost 2,000 miles of shoreline offered ideal conditions for milling the region’s abundant timber. Yet New England lumbermen did not exploit these riches until the California Gold Rush created a booming market for lumber and provided capital for steam-powered saws to cut it. The sawmill Puget Mill Company (known as Pope & Talbot since 1938) established in 1853 on the western shore of Puget Sound at Port Gamble was the longest-operating sawmill in North America when it ceased production in 1995. This paper reviews correspondence three of its founders wrote between September 1853 and December 1855 and traces how international marketing, product diversification, hard work, thrift, and the will to exploit opportunity helped Puget Mill meet a series of challenges– an Indian war, a gold strike that drew workers away, a boom-and-bust timber market in California – that closed many of the territory’s early sawmills. It pinpoints practices that guided the firm for generations, examining them in light of business ethics of the period and comparing them with another highly successful Puget Sound enterprise, Microsoft.
For further information, contact the presenter at JanEakins@aol.com