By Ted Spencer
Special to the Turnagain Times
Photo courtesy of Whittier School Collection, PWS Museum
The Columbia Lumber Company sawmill was in full swing by the summer of 1945. Sitka spruce and hemlock harvested from the Port Wells region around the bend from the Passage Canal waterway was gathered at the mouth of Whittier Creek. The trees were fed into the giant sawblades to be milled into railroad ties, telephone poles and heavy lumber. The timbers were used in the construction of bridges, docks and large buildings from Anchorage to the bases being built in the Aleutians.
The birth of Whittier was announced by the sound of steel axes chopping into the Sitka spruce. The sound resonated over the water and into the hills overlooking the Passage Canal. Al Swalling had landed a boat with a small team of men to prepare a campsite of tents. Clearing brush and trees, they had shelter and a camp kitchen for thirty men by nightfall.
Thus was Whittier's beginning. It was the summer of 1941 and within months the United States would enter the Second World War. Whittier was selected to be a deep-water port for the influx of war materials and equipment into Alaska.
Two and a half miles of tunnels had to be blasted through solid rock mountains in order to bring the railroad in and massive docks had to be built for the cargo ships sailing up from the States. Giant logs were needed for the construction of these docks and these were harvested in the Port Wells region, east of Whittier. Milled and treated lumber still had to be brought in by ship from distant sawmills.
Down the coast in Juneau, entrepreneur Thomas Morgan had plenty of experience with lumber mills. Arriving in the territory with wife Mary Sue in 1926, Morgan had taken over the Juneau Dishaw Lumber Co. in 1933. The enterprise became known as the Columbia Lumber Co. and was a full service builder's mill providing all manner of milled wood products.
Russ Dow Collection, UAA Consortium Library,9uaa-hmc-0396-14f-1299
The Columbia Lumber Co. mill on the banks of Whittier Creek during peace time. The mill employed as many as 60 workers at its height of operations. In the foreground is the “wigwam” burner, a welded metal frame work with a sheet metal cover. A conveyor from the mill fed wood scrap and sawdust into the structure where the scrap was burned. The heat from the burning fired the steam used in the operation of the facility.
The country was in the throes of the Great Depression and Morgan was frustrated that homebuilder's were having difficulty in obtaining loans for home construction, hence poor sales of milled lumber. He decided to take advantage of new laws governing the creation of savings & loan companies and founded the Alaska Federal Savings and Loan Association. Initially the savings and loan worked out of the offices of the Columbia Lumber Co. in downtown Juneau.
The war brought new demands for milled lumber in Alaska and for the American war effort. Lumber for aircraft, bases, ships and vehicles supplemented the valuable metals of aluminum and steel. The Columbia Lumber Co. had a mill in Sitka, harvesting the big trees of the Tongass National Forest. This provided for the needs of Southeastern Alaska but more milled lumber was needed in the treeless Aleutians and for the fledgling communities and bases being built along the Railbelt.
In January of 1944 an ad appeared in the Alaska Territorial Life Magazine heralding the building of a new Columbia Lumber Mill in the new rail port of Whittier. The new port was close to vast stands of Sitka Spruce and hemlock along the shorelines of Prince William Sound and there was ready transportation of the finished lumber aboard the outbound trains going through the tunnel and on to the interior and the Aleutians.
Logging continued and picked up speed in the Port Wells fiord mostly out of Pigot Bay. The log loads were dragged to the beaches at low tide and towed to Whittier by all manner of tugs and boats. Morgan directed the construction of a substantial mill facility on the shores of Whittier next to Whittier Creek. (the site today is the location of the Inn at Whittier Hotel).
The mill worked in conjunction with another company known as Koppers Co. who operated a pressurized creosote plant. Heavy milled logs were treated with the coal tar derivative “creosote” in order to protect the wood from rotting when used in the ground and exposed to the elements. Telephone poles, railroad ties and bridge supports were all vital to the building of Alaska and much of these materials came from the mill and creosote plant in Whittier.
After WWII ended the Cold War with the Communists worldwide was soon to follow. Crisis after crisis culminated with the Korean War. Whittier stayed in the saddle as a community with thousands of residents. The Columbia Lumber Mill was a major employer hiring up to 60 employees at one point. Alaska was growing and building and the lumber industry generating milled wood out of Whittier showed no signs of waning.
Business was so lucrative, in fact, two brothers from the Pacific Northwest established that another lumber mill in 1962. Wayne and Hershel Phillips set up their operation at the head of the Passage Canal on the far side of the airstrip. They appropriately christened the enterprise as the “Two Brothers Lumber Co.” They brought in heavy-duty sawmill equipment from Oregon and contracted a logging operation at Pigot Bay. Both mills were soon going “huckly buck”, cranking out milled spruce and hemlock. Both utilized the services for the Kopper Co.
The wood smoke from the cone shaped “wigwam” burners drifted over the town night and day providing Whittier with a mantle of pale haze. Dennis Chapman, a retired logger who worked for the Two Brothers Mill described the “wigwams” as cone shaped steel frameworks covered over with sheet metal. A dome of metal mesh was placed over the top of the wigwam to keep down errant sparks. A conveyor brought in all the wood scrap, sawdust and bark left over from the milling of the timber and it was burned inside the “wigwam”.
Both mills had a burner and the “wigwams” added to the unusual Whittier skyline of dock towers, smoke stacks, oil tanks, the giant concrete Buckner Building and the skyscraper known as the Hodge Building.
During the winter things slowed down for the logging industry. The bad weather in the western waters of Prince William Sound pounded the little community of Whittier as it still does today. The lumber mills shut down for the winter season only occupied by caretakers. The Columbia Lumber Co sitting on the banks of Whittier Creek had built up a substantial facility over the decades.
A fire had leveled the main building of the mill in 1955 but Columbia Lumber rebuilt another and kept on going. There were several smaller building fitted out as residences for seasonal management personnel. These cozy little houses were just fine for the winter caretakers Lenard and Alberta Day. Winter was about over and that exciting sense that spring is in the air was lifting the spirits. It was March 27 and the Days were getting the house ready for a birthday party.
They had no way of knowing that catastrophe was but hours away.
Next: The Great Alaska Earthquake Shatters Whittier.
Ted Spencer is the Curator of the Prince William Sound Museum.
