The Puget Sound Pulp and Timber Co. forest products complex had its beginnings in 1925 when Pacific Coast Paper Mills constructed a small tissue manufacturing plant on five acres of Bellingham, Washington’s downtown waterfront tideland landfill.
To help supply Pacific Coast Paper Mill’s need for a local supply of pulp, the San Juan Pulp Manufacturing Co. was founded in 1926 by Ossian Anderson, a local businessman, in the landfill adjacent to the Pacific Coast Paper Mill.
Formed in 1929, the Puget Sound Pulp & Timber Co. was a conglomerate of pulp, logging, lumber, and railroad companies in northwestern Washington. It included the Pacific Coast Paper Mills and the San Juan Pulp Manufacturing Co.,with Ossian Anderson becoming the first president. Despite the Depression, during the 1930s, Puget Sound Pulp & Timber’s former San Juan pulp mill enjoyed success.
In 1937, Puget Sound Pulp & Timber Co. began a construction project which rebuilt and re-equipped its original 1926 plant. World War II introduced significant expansion to the company's Bellingham operations with the construction of an alcohol extraction plant on the mill’s site. Built by the national Defense Plant Corporation, this plant produced ethyl alcohol from wood sugars found in the sulfite liquor left over from the pulping process. It was the first United States pulp mill to manufacture alcohol from wood-pulp wastes during World War II with the alcohol then converted into synthetic rubber used in the war effort.
Puget Sound Pulp & Timber Co. eventually purchased the successful plant from the government. A booming economy following World War II brought further improvement to the Bellingham pulp mill. Construction projects expanded the plant's capacity and it was converted from unbleached to bleached sulphide pulp production, and introduced the production of paperboard, industrial alcohol and other by-products from previously discarded materials. These by-product items were called Lignosite (used in cement, adhesives and vanillin), Amerex (used in tanning processes) and Q-Broxin (a mud additive used in drilling oil wells). Lignosite production began in 1947 and the production of the other two quickly followed.
Building on the alcohol plant’s success, in 1947, Puget Sound Pulp & Timber Co. established a chemical laboratory at the Bellingham plant to research uses for pulp byproducts. This lab eventually became one of the largest of its type in the world, attracting a group of distinguished scientists from both America and Europe. Chemical products developed in the Bellingham lab included vanilla flavoring, animal feeds, adhesives, tanning agents, pharmaceuticals, fuel pellets, solvents and drilling mud thinners.
The plant also adopted automated labor systems, at the time considered the most modern method for conserving raw material and saving time.
After eighteen years, the renovation of the plant was finished in 1955, increasing production plant from 152,875 tons in 1954 to 161,448 tons in 1956. Year after year, by a series of technical changes and improvements, the pulp-making capacity the daily average output of bleached sulphide pulp went from 371 tons in 1950 to 449 tons in 1955. Moreover, by 1956, net sales of the company of alcohol, Lignosite and paperboard totaled $24,141,502, well over half million more than in 1955.
On July 2, 1963, Puget Sound Pulp & Timber Co. was merged into the Georgia-Pacific Corporation. Georgia-Pacific continued to operate the pulp mill in Bellingham until its closing in May 2001.
The collection was a promotional album made by the Puget Sound Pulp and Timber Co. providing visual documentation and descriptions of the various activities of the plant as it appeared in 1956.
Entire collection can be viewed on the Libraries' Digital Collections website. Permission of Visual Materials curator is required to view originals. Contact Special Collections for more information.
Restrictions may exist on reproduction, quotation, or publication. Contact Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries for details.
Donor: Rushton, Washington State Department of Ecology, 1986.
Processed by: Arlene G. Cohen, 2018
The album was deteriorated and had acidic glues so the material was removed from the album.
The research laboratory was expanded by 3,500 square feet, reorganized and remodeled at the cost of over $200,000, including custom built steel furniture.
A pilot plant allows researchers, on a small scale, to test new methods and evaluate their effectiveness on equipment similar to that used by the full scale commercial pulp and paper plant
The alcohol plant utilizes the sugars contained in the spent liquor, while the Lignosite division is concerned with uses for the remaining dissolved wood constituents.
Handwritten notation on page 2: Puget Pulp Production of Ethyl Alcohol for the month of August, with 535,392 [gallons] circled.
The Lignosite Division processes spent waste liquor from the alcohol plant into a variety of useful products for the cement, tanning, chemical, oil, adhesives and ceramics industries.
Photograph includes text: Evaporation process in Lignosite manufacture is controlled automatically.
Photograph includes text: Through these heat exchangers, waste heat from alcohol plant is used in making Lignosite.
In October, 1955, a dockside storage facility was completed to provide for water barge shipping of liquid Lignosite to the Monsanto Chemical Co.
Knotter rejects and screenings are collected and processed to obtain complete fiber utilization and prevent overflows to the sewer.
The sulfite spent liquor stripper removes the sulfur dioxide and acidity from the liquor.
Photograph includes text: General location of the liquor stripper (on right) in relation with pulp mill installations.
The dredge handles a two cubic yard bucket, providing routine dredging of the company owned lob pone and waterway adjacent to the company property.