Archives West Finding Aid

The Wood & Iverson Co. began in 1896 as a shingle mill operation at Roosevelt, Washington, five miles east of Snohomish on French Creek. By 1909, William Washington Wood and Ivar C. Iverson (who knew one another from working together in previous logging operations) had saved enough money to buy timber acreage at Hobart, Washington, near Issaquah. In 1915 they opened a large sawmill, complete with a blacksmith shop, a locomotive house, brick dry kilns, a log pond and a wooden flume more than half a mile long. Wood & Iverson Co. employed roughly 200 men and turned out a variety of lumber supplies, including dimension lumber, siding, molding, pipe staves, lath and shingles, and even airplane stock.

The small community of Hobart became a bona fide “company town,” offering a general store, 35 company-built houses, a three-story hotel, and a post office. Because of Hobart’s distance from any nearby banks, the company also issued its own currency -- aluminum “hickeys” that came in denominations up to $20 and which could be used not only at the general store but were also honored in Renton, Maple Valley, Issaquah and even the Seattle Hotel. When William Wood died in 1932, his son Russell took over operations. The firm was dissolved in 1945 and little remains of the old sawmill site, which is near present day S.R. 18.