Archives West Finding Aid

The Bonners Ferry Lumber Company, a Weyerhaeuser enterprise, was formed in Wisconsin late in 1902 to take over some 13,000 acres of timberland, logging contracts, a mill site, sawmill machinery and riparian rights located on the Kootenai River at Bonners Ferry, Idaho. The company was beset by problems from the beginning. Driving logs down the Kootenai was difficult; the Great Northern Railway could not carry logs through tunnels; the facilities for holding logs once they arrived at Bonners Ferry were inadequate; and at times flood waters inundated the drying yard. The dry kiln was not large enough to handle the out-put of the mill; but even after the mill burned and was rebuilt in 1909, earnings never measured up to expenses.

Although production continued to rise from 1904, eventually peaking in 1913, it then tapered off. At various times after 1913 members of the Weyerhaeuser family considered taking their loss and discontinuing operations, but on each occasion either a director or the general manager, R.H. McCoy, pointed to favorable future prospects. Strikes in 1917 and 1919 which closed logging camps in northern Idaho severely crippled operations at the company. By the mid twenties the accounts were showing more red ink than black; the reasons include not only heavy taxes and high transportation charges, but exposure to fire and insects, high logging costs due to the rugged terrain, and severe weather conditions. Operations at Bonners Ferry Lumber Company were finally terminated in 1926, but it was not until 1937 that the Montana holdings of the company were sold to the J. Neills Lumber Company of Libby for $185,000. George F. Jewett and his associates at Potlatch Forests, Inc. salvaged a little more.

Huntington Taylor, who was chairman of the defense council for Kootenai county, was also the general manager of the Edward Rutledge Lumber Company. The defense councils were begun in 1917 and were responsible for coordinating the various war related fund drives.

The Red Collar Line, organized in October 1929, was a tugboat company which carried logs across Lake Coeur d'Alene to the Rutledge Sawmill. It was included in the 1931 incorporation of Potlatch Forests, Inc.

Another of the Weyerhaeuser - PFI enterprises, the St. Joe Boom Company was responsible for sorting logs before they were towed across the lake by the Red Collar Line.

Based in Coeur d'Alene, the Rutledge Timber Company was organized in 1902 with Edward Rutledge as president. In 1917 Huntington Taylor became general manager. The company owned shares in both the St. Joe Boom Company and Red Collar lines. Never very profitable, the company paid no dividends from its founding in 1902 until its merger with the Clearwater and Potlatch companies in 1931.