Prentice Bloedel was a leader of the timber industry. He left a brief teaching career to join the management of his family's far-flung timber empire and led the industry's forest-conservation efforts. Bloedel guided the firm into a merger with H. R. MacMillan Export Co., which became the giant MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. Prentice and Virginia Bloedel were important patrons of the arts in Seattle, a tradition carried on by their daughter Virginia Wright. The Bloedels created the Bloedel Reserve, a botanical showcase of gardens, pools, lawns, and arbors on Bainbridge Island. Born in Bellingham in 1900, Bloedel graduated from Yale University planning to be a teacher. In 1929, in response to a request from his father, he gave up his teaching career and went to work in the family business: Bloedel, Stewart and Welch, based on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
He first took charge of a new mill at Port Alberni, B.C. The mill became one of the first to make efficient use of sawdust and waste, called "hog fuel," to generate power. He believed integrating a pulp mill with sawmill operations would get the most out of every stick of timber, and the mill became one of the first waste-based operations in North America. In 1938, Bloedel guided the company into a reforestation program and the firm became the first company to plant seedlings. A decade later, the firm was responsible for 70 percent of all the reforestation carried out by private industry in British Columbia. During the 1930s and 1940s, Bloedel began buying land in Whatcom and Skagit counties that had been clear-cut and abandoned. He became treasurer of Bloedel, Stewart and Welch in 1942 and continued to implement innovations to the industry.
In 1948, he launched a plant designed to produce fuel briquettes made from shingle waste products, which were marketed under license as "pres-to-logs." Two years later, driven by a reluctant conviction that "to do the best with the resource would require larger units, greater markets and greater flexibility in product," Bloedel guided the firm into a merger with H.R. MacMillan Export Co., which became the giant MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. He moved back to Seattle and to Bainbridge Island and, in early 1972, retired from the board of MacMillan Bloedel. He continued his involvement in the industry through his leadership of Bloedel Timberlands Development Inc., a company he founded in 1945 in partnership with his father. The firm bought up land long since logged and essentially abandoned.
Prentice Bloedel died at his Capitol Hill (Seattle) home in June 1996, at age 95.
General correspondence, reports, financial records, minutes, newsletters, ephemera, speeches and writings, maps, and similar records documenting the management of MacMillan Bloedel operations on Vancouver Island, B.C. as well as the direction of other companies by Prentice Bloedel and his father, J.H. Bloedel. Firms include Lake Whatcom Logging Company; Bloedel Donovan Lumber Mills; Columbia Valley Lumber Company; Bloedel, Stewart & Welch Ltd.; Bellingham Securities Syndicate; and Canada Permanent Toronto General Trust Company. Also includes papers regarding the University of Washington Arboretum, 1954-1970.
Open to all users.
Creator's literary rights transferred to the University of Washington Libraries.
Donated by Virginia Wright, 6/27/1997.