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Grande Ronde Lumber Company

Grande Ronde Lumber Company
Grande Ronde's Perry Mill, from a vintage The Timberman magazine.

History

Small scale sawmills started cutting through the northeastern Oregon forests as European settlements expanded into the region. The early mills remained small operations and cut lumber for local uses. Sawmilling on an industrial scale finally arrived at the dawn of the 1890s.

The Grande Ronde Lumber Company has several different origin stories in print. Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares by Nancy Langston states the Stanley-Smith Lumber Company built the first bandsaw equipped mill in northeaster Oregon at Stumptown, later renamed Perry, in 1890, while Sawdust In Their Veins by Mary Ellen Stoddard Smith states five Wisconsin-based lumber barons incorporated the Grande Ronde company in La Grande in 1890 and moved the mill to Perry in 1891. What is not in doubt is that Grande Ronde operated the first large sawmill in northeastern Oregon at Perry, and in 1902 George Stoddard, Charles W. Nibley, and several other investors from the group of LDS businessmen that had followed David Eccles to eastern Oregon bought the company in 1902.

The company from its inception started logging the forests up the Grande Ronde River, and by 1895 the company had 200 loggers at work in the forests along the river. The loggers used primarily horses and gravity to move logs cut on the surrounding hillsides down to the river. The company built a series of at least five splash dams throughout the Grande Ronde river system; these dams would be constructed mostly by piling rocks and other debris into the river bed, impounding small lakes. Once enough logs had been accumulated in the river the dams would be dynamited, and the water released would flush the accumulated logs down to a log pond created by a permanent dam built across the river at Perry.
Boarding house and residences in Perry. Jeff Moore collection.
The first indication of the Grande Ronde Lumber Company getting into railroad logging is their purchase of a new 25-ton Heisler geared locomotive in 1905. The company started building a logging railroad west along the Grande Ronde River from a connection with the then Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company main line at Hilgard, with three or four miles completed by the end of 1905. The American Lumberman reported on 29 Sept 1906 that "From five to six miles of track have been added by this company to its logging railroad during the last summer, and it is now in touch with a fine body of timber." Two weeks prior the same publication had written "The company has nine miles of logging railway extending from the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company at Hilgard into the timber along the Grand Ronde river." By 1908 the company reported 14 miles of railroad operated, but only 10 of them owned, with no explanation as to what the four miles operated but not owned represented. The company reshuffled its locomotive roster in the 1908/1909 time frame, first by acquiring a used Heisler, and then by sending the original Heisler off to the affiliated Nibley-Mimnaugh Lumber Company operations in Wallowa and replacing it with a new Shay geared locomotive. The company thereafter used the Heisler as its woods engine and the Shay on the road trains. The railroad suffered its share of troubles; The Timberman reported in June 1912 "...logging operations were interrupted by the logging train going in the ditch, and the breaking of an axle which crippled the second engine sent to the relief of the first." Tragedy struck on 22 December 1913 when chains securing logs loaded on a flatcar broke while Andrew Brodreskitt, a brakeman on the log trains, happened to be walking along the car towards the locomotive. Brodreskitt died instantly in the resulting pileup, and his estate later won a substantial judgement against the company.

Back in 1906 the American Lumberman had reported "This company recently increased its capital stock from $500,000 to $650,000, the additional capital being used to buy timber land below Elgin on the Grand Ronde and Willowa (sic) rivers. Its timber will be railed to the mill at Perry, a distance of thirty five miles." The Grande Ronde company finally wrapped up its operations on the Grande Ronde River above Perry and moved down the river by early 1917. The Grande Ronde company built two known railroads off the Joseph Branch. The first incorporated several miles of the old George Palmer Lumber Company logging railroad grade up Lookingglass Creek to the confluence of Little Lookingglass Creek, where it turned west to follow the main channel of the creek. By the spring of 1920 this line was a reported 10 miles long and reached the Umatilla National Forest boundary. The company requested that the U.S. Forest Service sell them a block of timber inside the forest so that the life of the railroad could be extended. The Forest Service apparently considered the request, but the available records are not clear enough to confirm whether the company got that timber or not. In 1919 the company built a second line off the Joseph Branch; this line connected with the branch about a half mile north of Palmer Junction and crossed the river on a trestle before heading up the Duncan Creek drainage for about two miles, which together with the Lookingglass Creek line totalled the 12 miles of railroad the company reported in operation in 1919. Logging on that spur was to last for about three years, through 1921, but the trestle across the river reportedly washed out in 1920 and may or may not have been rebuilt for the last year of operations. The Grande Ronde company also loaded logs onto railcars at several other points along the Joseph Branch. The company reportedly did most of its logging with horses that dragged logs to the ridgetops above the railroad, where they would be simply rolled down the slope to the tracks.
Grande Ronde Lumber Company employee housing in Perry. The Union Pacific main line is out of view to the left, and steam can be seen rising from the sawmill on the other side of the ridgeline towards the left side of the photo. Jeff Moore collection.
By early 1922 the Grande Ronde Lumber Company shifted its focus again, this time to the country northwest of Perry. In March 1922 The Timberman reported Grande Ronde "operated a camp at Glover and will put in a spur from the OR&N about five miles above Hilgard to bring out about two million board feet of timber." This operation used a much more extensive logging railroad system than the company had used up to this point, and it caused Grande Ronde to order a third locomotive, another new Heisler, in 1924. Unfortunately the Perry Mill burned to the ground in September 1924, but the company promptly built a new mill on the same site. When the new mill opened in March 1925 it had a daily capacity of 120,000 board feet and a yearly capacity of 25,000,000 board feet, both figures larger than the mill it replaced. The Grande Ronde company logging railroad hit perhaps its high water mark in 1925, the statistics for which are included in a 1926 Lumber Industry Directory, as follows:

"Grande Ronde Lumber Co., Perry; camp post office, same; daily output, 100M; 2 sides; 150 men; 1 donkey engine; machine shop; commissary; electric light plant; air compressors; 1 Clyde loader; 2 logging tractors; 40 horses; route supplies via Hilgard; camp telephone via La Grande; manager Elmier I. Stoddard; superintendent, H. Redell; purchasing agent, Elmer I. Stoddard; master mechanic, Eli Beaudette; 20 miles s.g. track; 52 lb. rail; 3 geared locomotives; 1 moving car; 2 speeders; maximum grade, 8 per cent; maximum curvature, 30 degrees; locomotive fuel, coal and wood; logging incline: length, 2100 feet; maximum grade, 32 per cent; trucks and flat cars supplied by O-W R & N railroad."

By late 1926 the Grande Ronde Company was nearing the end of its available timber in the area north and west of La Grande. Grande Ronde had acquired substantial timberlands in southeastern Union County, and by late 1926 the company was well into plans to move its sawmill from Perry to the new town of Pondosa. The move happened by the middle months of 1927, and Grande Ronde sold its timberlands tributary to the Perry area to the Mount Emily Lumber Company. The continued story of the Grande Ronde is covered on the Big Creek & Telocaset page of this website.

Maps
The Grande Ronde Lumber Company logging railroads in the Grande Ronde River. Map is based on descriptive information in written resources and LIDAR imagery and is subject to further revision if new information becomes available. Not all lines may be shown.
The Grande Ronde Lumber Company logging railroads tributary to the Joseph Branch.
Map of the Grande Ronde and Mount Emily operations in the Five Points and Glover areas. Untangling what each company had in this area is not easy as no definitive resources splitting out what each operation had and how they interacted are known to survive, so a great deal of speculation is involved on this map. Grande Ronde may have had additional lines especially in the area west of Glover, but nothing conclusive is supported by available resources. Also unknown is the specific location of the incline railroad referenced in the 1926 directory. Special thanks to J.B. Bane and Brian Fosback for help with this map.
Locomotive Roster

101- Heisler 2-truck, 25-ton, c/n 1085, Built 5/1905. Built for Grande Ronde Lumber Company, Perry, Oregon; to Nibley-Mimnaugh, Wallowa, OR; to Bowman-Hicks, Wallowa, Oregon.

102- Heisler 2-Truck, 37-ton, c/n 1053, built 11/1901. Cylinders 15x12, Drivers 36", Weight 37 tons. Built as Debois & Bond Brothers #1, Bond, Maryland; to Grande Ronde Lumber Company #102, Perry, OR. Transferred to Pondosa operations. To Stoddard Lumber Company #102 1930; eventually became Big Creek & Telocaset #102. Likely scrapped around 1955.

103- Lima 2-truck Shay, c/n 2241, built 11/1909. Cylinders 10x12, Drivers 29.5", Weight 50 tons. Built as Grande Ronde Lumber Company #103, Perry, OR; Transferred to Pondosa operations. To Stoddard Lumber Company #103, Pondosa, OR, 1929. Disposition unrecorded.

104- Heisler 2-Truck, 50-tons, c/n 1496, built 1/1924. Built as Grande Ronde Lumber Company #104, Perry, OR; transferred to Pondosa. To Stoddard Lumber Company #104 1930; to Grande Ronde Pine Company #104 1931; to Almanor Railroad, Chester, CA, 1941; to Whitney Co., Tacoma, WA, circa 1947. Scrapped.

?- Heisler 2-Truck, 22 tons, c/n 1091, built 6/1906. Built as Meacham Lumber Company, Meacham, OR; to Grande Ronde Lumber Company, Perry, OR; to Wilsom & Mallory, Yacolt, WA; to Columbia Tie & Timber Company, Yacold, WA; to Broughton Lumber Company, Cooks, WA.
Photos
Nibley-Mimnaugh Lumber #101, formerly Grande Ronde Lumber #101, at Wallowa. J.B. Bane collection.
Grande Ronde Lumber #102 on the Big Creek & Telocaset Railroad at Pondosa in 1939. Robert M. Hanft photo, Jeff Moore collection.
Grande Ronde Lumber #104 on the Big Creek & Telocaset Railroad. John T. Labbe Collection of Logging and Railroad Photographs, 1892-2010, Washington State Archives, Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov.

References

Sawdust In Their Veins: The Story of George and Ellen Stoddard, Their Ancestors and Descendants by Mary Ellen Stoddard Smith. Harmony Street Publishers, Pittsburg, PA, 2019.

Oregon's Joseph Branch: History Through the Miles by Barton Jennings. TechScribes, Inc, Avon, IL, 2019.

Various issues of The Timberman, American Lumberman,and other industry publications; A United States Army Corps of Engineers study on rehabilitating fish habitat along the Grande Ronde river; Various court decisions; and other miscellaneous documents.