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Anaconda Forest Products Company Records, 1890-1971

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Anaconda Forest Products Company (Bonner, Mont.)
Title
Anaconda Forest Products Company Records
Dates
1890-1971 (inclusive)
Quantity
534.5 linear feet (including 473 bound volumes), 4 reels of 16 mm film, and 3 oversize boxes
Collection Number
Mss 057 (collection)
Summary
This collection includes records of the Anaconda Forest Products Company and 16 subsidiary divisions owned, operated, or directly associated with the Bonner, Montana-based logging and lumber processing company between the years 1890 and 1971. Materials in this collection consist of incoming and outgoing correspondence, financial records, legal documents, personnel records, annual reports, company publications, photographs, 16-millimeter film, maps, and blueprints. The collection includes particularly extensive correspondence from principal company officials and division managers as well as bound volumes of financial transactions for the company's mill and retail operations.
Repository
University of Montana, Mansfield Library, Archives and Special Collections
Archives and Special Collections
Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library
University of Montana
32 Campus Dr. #9936
59812-9936
Missoula, MT
Telephone: 406-243-2053
library.archives@umontana.edu
Access Restrictions

Researchers must use collection in accordance with the policies of Archives and Special Collections, the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, and The University of Montana-Missoula.

Languages
English
Sponsor
Funding for creating this finding aid was provided through a grant awarded by the National Historic Publications and Records Commission. Funding for encoding this finding aid was provided through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Historical Note

The Montana Improvement Company began construction of a large lumber mill on the Blackfoot River in 1885. Construction continued into 1886, and the town of Bonner was built to house employees and managers. The mill had a rated capacity of 125,000 feet in eleven hours. In 1887, because of timber suits against the Montana Improvement Company, the Big Blackfoot Milling Company was organized; it absorbed the Blackfoot Milling and Manufacturing Company (incorporated in 1888) in 1891. Andrew Hammond, E. L. Bonner, Richard and Eddy and others organized the company and continued lumber operations. In 1898, Marcus Daly purchased the mill to provide mine timbers and lumber for his Butte and Anaconda mining and smelting operations. W. H. Hammond was the mill's first manager. He retired after the sale of the mill to Daly and was succeeded for brief periods by A. W. Griffin and James E. Totman.

Kenneth Ross had come to Montana from Nova Scotia via Pennsylvania to work on the Northern Pacific Railroad. He was later hired to build small lumber mills at Bearmouth, Montana, and owned a sawmill in Evaro, Montana, and supplied bridge timbers for the Montana Central Railroad; that business ended in 1892 because of competition from the timber empire of Daly, Hammond, and Clark. Those same men asked Ross to assume control of their lumber empire, promising that they would not mix politics with business. He served as manager of the Bonner operation for eighteen months, until Daly involved him in politics. John R. Toole, one of Daly's confidantes, replaced him; Ross returned to the mill in 1900 as supervisor with Toole as the mill's president. During their management, they faced the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) and their agitation of the lumbermen who worked for the mill; both were threatened with death by I.W.W. operatives. Ross retired in 1925. He was succeeded by W.C. Lubrecht as general manager; he had worked at the mill since 1896, and served for over 40 years.

W.A. Clark interests constructed a dam at the confluence of the Big Blackfoot and Missoula (Clark Fork) Rivers in 1907 to supply power to Missoula and Bonner for lights and an electric railway. Those interests also established Milltown and a sawmill near the dam site. The Anaconda Copper Mining Company purchased that mill, retail yards in Missoula and Butte, and the entire holdings of Western Lumber Company and Clark interests in western Montana in 1928. The Milltown mill was operated in conjunction with the Bonner mill for some years until it was shut down.

The original Bonner mill burned in January of 1919 and was rebuilt in the summer of 1920. The Big Blackfoot Lumber Company was incorporated in 1909 and absorbed the Big Blackfoot Milling Company in 1910. The Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) purchased the Big Blackfoot Lumber Company that same year, making the mill the Anaconda Company, Lumber Department. In 1961, the mill changed its name to Anaconda Forest Products, a Division of the Anaconda Company. In 1972, Champion International Corporation purchased almost all of the assets of Anaconda Forest Products.

After all the timber directly around the mill was exhausted at the turn of the century, the logging operations were moved about fifteen miles up the Blackfoot River to Potomac. There were three logging camps established there, at Union Creek, Arkansas Creek, and Potomac proper. To provide efficient log transport, the company built the Big Blackfoot Milling Company Railway from the McNamara, Montana, landing to Greenough, Montana, about fourteen miles; the line was completed in 1904. The company used two Shay locomotives, flat cars, and a McGiffert log loader to load and transport logs south to the landing, where they were floated downstream to the Bonner mill. In 1910, construction began to extend the line north from Bonner to McNamara and the road was re-named the Big Blackfoot Railway. The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, which completed its line through Missoula in 1909, acquired the Big Blackfoot and completed the line to McNamara in 1913, with complete acquisition in 1916.

The Potomac camp operated until 1916. From May to October of that year, the operation moved west to the Nine Mile Valley with headquarters at Stark, Montana. The Blackfoot valley was not logged extensively from 1916 to 1926. Operations resumed in that valley in 1926, when the mill's logging operations were moved to Greenough, Montana. The railway was extended the mail line fourteen miles to Sunset, then added branch lines up Belmont Creek, Blanchard Creek, and Elk Creek. That camp lasted until 1934, when operations moved to Woodworth, just south of Seeley Lake, Montana, in the Swan Valley. It had both permanent and portable buildings, including bunk houses, a mess hall and kitchen, office and community building, school, library car, repair and machine shop, and family housing. The rail line extended another fourteen miles to Cottonwood, Montana. The ACM ran another line from Cottonwood to Woodworth and branch lines from Blanchard Flats to the Cottonwood Lakes to Monture Creek.

The headquarters was moved again to Salmon Lake in 1948 and Woodworth was abandoned. Log trucks largely replaced railway transport about the same time, and railway transport ceased completely by 1957. With the advent of trucks and portable logging equipment, the camps were no longer needed, and all the camps were dissolved in 1960. Twin Creeks became the new base for trucking and logging operations, with company offices and repair facilities there.

The retail department of the mill was the Interstate Lumber Company, which was established in 1911. It was headquartered in Missoula with retail operations throughout western Montana, including Butte, Deer Lodge, Hamilton, Helena, Stevensville, Twin Bridges, and Whitehall.

The Hotel Margaret was built in 1892 as a showhouse for Montana larch products and provided temporary housing for visiting managers and others.

John R. Toole and William Toole formed the Bitterroot Development Company in 1890 to supply timber to the ACM. Other Hamilton operations, part of ACM interests by 1892, included a mill, an electric plant, and the Ravalli Hotel, which was completed in 1896. There were close ties with Marcus Daly's home and other businesses near Hamilton, including copious land acquisitions.

The Hope Lumber Company was incorporated in Idaho in 1907 as a manufacturing subsidiary of the ACM. It had headquarters at Missoula and operated offices in Hope, Idaho. It logged extensively in Bonner and Kootenai counties in Idaho.

The Northwest Milling and Lumber Company was incorporated in 1900 with J. R. Toole as president. It sold its assets to the ACM in 1913.

The Bonner Lumber Company was incorporated in 1905 in Deer Lodge, Montana. The ACM purchased it in 1930.

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Content Description

This collection includes records of the Anaconda Forest Products Company and 16 subsidiary divisions owned, operated, or directly associated with the lumber processing company between the years 1890 and 1971. Materials in this collection consist of incoming and outgoing correspondence, financial records, legal documents, personnel records, annual reports, company publications, photographs, 16-millimeter film, maps, and blueprints. The collection includes particularly extensive correspondence series from principal company officials and division managers as well as bound volumes of financial transactions for the company's mill and retail operations.

Generated by one of the largest, most influential, and widely diversified corporations in Montana history, the materials in this collection provide tremendous access into the internal operations of the Anaconda Company; the complex interrelationships between parent, subsidiary, and affiliated businesses; and the cycles of growth and contraction inherent to resource extraction businesses. The materials in this collection also draw attention to the dynamics of professional relationships within a sparsely populated state. Many of the same individuals served in principal corporate roles for parent, subsidiary, and affiliated businesses. In addition, these records reveal on-going transactions between the state's largest corporate entities, most often conducted through subsidiary and affiliated operations.

General correspondence, personnel and legal records in this collection are potentially valuable resources for genealogical and property ownership research. Personnel records provide insights into working conditions at the mill and other entities. Mill records and yard transaction receipts provide an indirect representation of fluctuating timber supply and demand spanning eighty years of local, regional, and national economic development cycles. Records of food rationing during World War II provide documentation of that event, and "spy reports" provide an insight into the timber industry's struggle with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) during the late Progressive Era. Land records and maps provide extensive documentation of land ownership and use in the Blackfoot and Swan Valleys of western Montana. One series concerns Montana's state programs to aid recovery from the Great Depression, which had a great impact on the timber industry in the state. In addition, the photographs and film materials in this collection document tremendous technological changes in the timber industry as well as representative working conditions for industry employees.

Records of subsidiary and related businesses provide documentation of the operations of these businesses in Bonner, Hamilton, St. Regis, Darby, Thompson Falls, and Ravalli, Montana; as well as Hope, Idaho. These companies provided not only lumbering and milling services similar to the Bonner operation, but supported that operation by providing transportation, electricity, and executive housing necessary to support the entire business network. There is also documentation of criticism of the ACM's pervasive influence in Montana business and politics. A final series contains unidentified materials, mostly financial, that may or may not be directly connected with the rest of the collection.

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

Researchers are responsible for using in accordance with 17 U.S.C. and any other applicable statutes. Copyright not transferred to the University of Montana and remains with the current owner of the Anaconda Forest Products's assets.

Preferred Citation

[Name of document, item, or photograph number], Anaconda Forest Products Company Records, Archives and Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, The University of Montana-Missoula.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

The collection is divided into two subgroups, then into twenty-nine series:

Subgroup 1: Big Blackfoot Milling Company/Anaconda Company, Lumber Department/Anaconda Forest Products

Series I: Correspondence, 148.5 linear feet, 1894-1968

Subseries 1: General Correspondence, 0.25 linear feet, 1899-1961

Subseries 2: Outgoing Correspondence, 118.0 linear feet, 1900-1968

Subseries 3: John R. Toole, 15.0 linear feet, 1900-1920

Subseries 4: Kenneth Ross, 3.75 linear feet, 1894-1923

Subseries 5: W. C. Lubrecht, 1 folder, 1935-1936

Subseries 6: R. A. Day, 3 folders, 1911-1918

Subseries 7: E. E. Hershey, 3.5 linear feet, 1906-1920

Subseries 8: Roscoe Haines, 4.25 linear feet, 1917-1926

Subseries 9: George Fox, 1 folder, 1906-1919

Subseries 10: Frank Vogel, 3.0 linear feet, 1894-1906

Subseries 11: Judge D. F. Smith, 0.5 linear feet, 1907-1916

Series II: Financial Records, 245.5 linear feet (including 257 volumes), 1895-1971

Series III: Legal and Land Records, 7.0 linear feet (including oversize 20 volumes), 1894-1963

Series IV: Personnel, 5.5 linear feet and 1 partial oversize box, 1894-1930

Series V: Land Department, 47.5 linear feet (including 32 volumes), 1894-1963

Subseries 1: Correspondence, 42.25 linear feet, 1907-1962

Subseries 2: Financial, 3.0 linear feet (20 volumes), 1898-1963

Subseries 3: Plat books, 2.25 linear feet (12 volumes), 1919-1923

Series VI: Kenneth Ross, 0.5 linear feet, 1898-1920

Series VII: Annual Reports, 4.0 linear feet (14 volumes), 1933-1959

Series VIII: Emergency Relief Commission of Montana/Montana Relief Commission, 1.0 linear feet, 1931-1935

Series IX: Photographs, 0.75 linear feet, 1898-1961

Series X: Publications and Clippings, 1.5 linear feet, 1890-1963

Series XI: Film, 4 reels, circa 1955-1963

Series XII: Maps and Blueprints, 0.5 linear feet and 2 oversize boxes, 1900-1953

Subgroup 2: Subsidiary and Related Businesses

Series XIII: Big Blackfoot Railway, 1.0 linear feet and 1 partial oversize box, 1908-1914

Series XIV: Hotel Margaret, 2.25 linear feet (8 volumes), 1892-1948

Series XV: Big Blackfoot Land Company, 0.5 linear feet (3 volumes), 1910-1938

Series XVI: Blackfoot Land Development Company, 0.75 linear feet and 2 oversize boxes (3 volumes), 1914-1935

Series XVII: Bonner Lumber Company, 1 folder, 1929-1930

Series XVIII: Hamilton Operations, 46.5 linear feet (including 58 volumes), 1890-1921

Subseries 1: Hamilton Mill, 42.75 linear feet (including 44 volumes), 1890-1921

Subseries 2: Hamilton, Mercantile Department, 3.75 linear feet.(14 volumes), 1897-1909

Subseries 3: Ravalli Hotel, 1 folder, 1896

Series XIX: St. Regis Mill, 5.0 linear feet (including 7 volumes), 1900-1929

Series XX: Darby Operations, 1.0 linear feet (4 volumes), 1896-1907

Series XXI: Ravalli Mill, 0.25 linear feet (1 volume), 1897

Series XXII: Bitter Root Development Company, 2.5 linear feet (13 volumes), 1895-1914

Subseries 1: Sawmill Department, 0.5 linear feet (3 volumes), 1896-1903

Subseries 2: Mercantile Department, 1.25 linear feet (6 volumes), 1895-1898

Subseries 3: Hamilton Townsite Company, 0.75 linear feet (4 volumes), 1895-1914

Series XXIII: Hope Lumber Manufacturing Company/Hope Lumber Company, 1.25 linear feet (including 6 volumes), 1901-1929

Series XXIV: Interstate Lumber Company, 0.25 linear feet (including 1 volume), 1911-1962

Series XXV: Western Lumber Company, 2.25 linear feet (including 1 volume), 1894-1939

Series XXVI: Northwest Milling and Lumber Company, 0.25 linear feet (including 1 volume), 1900-1919

Series XXVII: Thompson Falls Mercantile, 1.25 linear feet (including 13 volumes and one oversize box), 1892-1940

Series XXVIII: Capital Lumber Company, 0.25 linear feet (1 volume), 1901-1911

Series XXIX: Unidentified, 7.0 linear feet (36 volumes), 1898-1961

Custodial History

The bulk of the collection was in the possession of the Anaconda Forest Products Company and the companies that acquired its assets (Champion International, Stimson Lumber Company, and Plum Creek Timber) until donation to the archives. Several maps regarding the Big Blackfoot Milling Co., Big Blackfoot Railway, and Anaconda Copper Mining Lumber Department were acquired by the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula and held in their collections until they were transferred to Archives and Special Collections in 2003. A portion of the ledgers were duplicate volumes in the Montana Historical Society's Anaconda Copper Company collection. Volume 20 of Series III was transferred to Archives and Special Collections from the Montana Historical Society in the 1980s.

Acquisition Information

Gift of the Anaconda Company and Stimson Lumber Company, 1974, 1986, and 1996. Several maps were a gift from the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, 2003. Some volumes were transferred from the Montana Historical Society at an unknown date. In 2015, an additional donation from Plum Creek Timber of mostly township and range maps was made and subsequently added to the collection.

Processing Note

The collection was originally processed as four separate collections: LC 57, LC 131, LC 230, and SC 342 as separate accessions were acquired. Film and photographs were separated to those genre collections.

During reprocessing in 2003, the four manuscript collections, film, and photographs were intellectually reunited into one manuscript collection. This process involved extensive reorganization and integration to unite related materials. Photograph and film reel numbers assigned during original processing were replaced with new numbers to reflect the intellectual reunification of collection materials and a small degree of photograph reorganization. In addition, 206 loosely bound volumes of correspondence from Series I and V were unbound and placed within archival folders and boxes for preservation purposes.

Additional materials were acquired in 2015 by Archives and Special Collections. The majority of the materials are township and range maps and land examination records of the Montana logging property owned and operated by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. These maps and land examination records were kept in their original state and organized according to range. The materials were in fairly decent order upon arrival and only needed slight rearrangement. The documents were kept in their original folders and no physical changes were made to the documents. Additional materials acquired were eleven large ledgers containing township and range maps and other maps of logging properties owned by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Seven ledgers were placed in oversized boxes; these ledgers were not in good condition and boxed to prevent further damage. Other items acquired were small journals that corresponded directly to the maps; these journals were used by land surveyors and were used in making the maps. After consideration, the newly acquired material directly connects to the existing Anaconda Forests Products collection, Mss 057, Series III. The boxes of material and ledgers were processed accordingly and added to Mss 057, Series III. At that same time, former manuscript collection Mss 453, a Big Blackfoot Milling Township Plat Book, was added to the collection as Volume 20 in Series III. The book is similar to added materials from the most recent accession and addition.

Separated Materials

During 2003 reprocessing, commonly available publications that had been part of the collection were discarded. Forest industry-related publications not produced by the Anaconda Company or the Anaconda Forest Products Company were sent to the Forest History Society Library and Archives in Durham, NC.

Related Materials

The Montana Historical Society holds a large collection of Anaconda Company records that include groups of records from the Bitter Root Development Company, the Big Blackfoot Milling Company, and the Hamilton Water Company. Additional Big Blackfoot Milling Company records dated 1882 to 1899 are available as Mss 246 at the Univesity of Montana Archives and Special Collections.

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Detailed Description of the Collection