They opened offices in Tacoma, Wash., where the company is still based. The Denkmann family stayed in Rock Island. Memories of the Weyerhaeusers and the Denkmanns abound in the Illinois Quad-Cities. 10th Ave., Rock Island, which Mr. Weyerhaeuser bought in the 1860s, was donated to Augustana College after his daughter Apollonia Weyerhaeuser Davis died in 1953. The only stipulation was that the college continue to call it the House on the Hill, the family's name for the home.
Students now live in apartments upstairs and special college events are held on the main floor.
Mr. Denkmann's memory lives on in the form of Augustana's Denkmann Memorial Hall. Mr. Denkmann's children donated the building to the college in 1909, and it was used for a library between 1911 and 1990. Now it houses Augustana's foreign language departments and other offices. Both men donated substantial sums of money to build the Rock Island Public Library. Today, the Weyerhaeuser Co. employs more than 35,000 people in the United States and Canada.