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Crater Lake Lumber Company Crater Lake Box & Lumber Company Lorenz Lumber Company |
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Crater Lake Box & Lumber Company #1 in Sprague River in June 1939. John T. Labbe Collection of Logging and Railroad Photographs, 1892-2010, Washington State Archives,
Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov.
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History The town of Sprague River, Oregon, got its start essentially with the completion of the Oregon, California & Eastern Railroad in 1923. The arrival of the railroad opened up a lot of the surrounding timberlands to commercial harvesting, and a couple businessman started building sawmills. The Sprague River-White Pine Lumber Company built one of them, only to sell it to two men named Adams and Edgerton in 1924, who in turn sold it to the Campbell-Towle Lumber Company based out of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, which had just purchased a substantial block of reservation timber. The firm changed its name in early 1928 to Fountain-Campbell Lumber Company. In January 1929 G.C. Lorenz, who had operated a sawmill near Bonanza until it burned in late 1928, purchased the Fountain-Campbell Lumber Company, followed shortly by several additional large blocks of timber adjacent to the lands he inherited with the Fountain-Campbell operation. G.C. Lorenz joined with C.P.Lorenz to incorporate the Lorenz Lumber Company in April 1929. It was clear by this point that a logging railroad would be required to bring the timber to the mill, and the OC&E installed a switch for the railroad in June 1929. Lorenz bought a locomotive and other equipment to expedite construction, which pushed south and east into the timber. The company's log trains operated over about a half mile of the OC&E main line to reach the mill. The operation stood out from almost all of the others in the region because it used disconnected trucks to haul logs instead of skeleton log cars or flatcars. The Crater Lake Lumber Company bought out Lorenz in 1930, who in turn leased the operation in 1937 to the Crater Lake Box and Lumber Company, who ran it until January 1943. Crater Lake Lumber resumed operations of the property at that time, though they shut everything down for good in July of that year. Ewauna Box purchased some of the company buildings from Crater Lake, and another party leased the box factory to process all remaining lumber from the mill before it too shut down. |
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Maps |
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Map of the Lorenz/Crater Lake logging railroad out of Sprague River.
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Locomotive Roster
1- Baldwin 2-6-2T, c/n 55731, Built 1922. Cylinders 17x24, Drivers 44", Tractive Effort 22,100 lbs., Weight 60 tons. Built as Hedlund Box & Lumber Company #1, Marcus, Washington; to Port Angeles Western #1, Port Angeles, Washington; to Lorenz Lumber Company #1; to Crater Lake Lumber Company/Crater Lake Box & Lumber Company; to General Construction #1, Rockport, Washington. Scrapped circa 1951. 2- Willamette 3-Truck, c/n 4, Built 1922. Cylinders 12x15, Drivers 36", Boiler Pressure 200 lbs., Tractive Effort 31,968 lbs., Weight 70 tons. Built as Beaver Creek Logging Company #101, Vernonia, Oregon; to Connacher Logging Company #851, Glenwood, OR, 1924; to Crater Lake Box & Lumber Company #851 1942; to Sprague River Land & Timber Company #851; to Guy F. Atkinson Company #2801, Long Beach, CA; Scrapped 1952. |
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Photos |
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Baldwin specification card and builder's photograph of Hedlund Box #1, destined to become the Lorenz/Crater Lake 1. Baldwin built the locomotive so
that it could be fired with either coal or oil, which explains the large spark arrestor on the stack.
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The back of the Baldwin specification card for the locomotive.
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