The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-01-01
THE LUMBER INDUSTRY.
Seattle the Center of Mighty Manu-
featuring Circle.

Iacturang Circle.
Seattle has for years maintained the
commercial and financial supremacy of
the Puget sound region, and as such has
been the center Of its chief industry-the
lumber trade. Take pair of dividers and
describe circle with a radius of forty
miles around Seattle Within this circle
are now annually cut 100000, coo feet of
lumber. For the past thirty years there
has been cut an average of 40o,000,000 an-
nually In the same territory The pioneer
millionaire corporations of Port Discovery,
Port Hadiock, Port Ludlow, Port Gamble,
Port Madison, Port Blakeley and Utsalady.
and the great mills of Seattle, Tacoma and
Gig Harbor, are all within the area repre-
sented by this circle. With the single ex-
ception of the Nooksack, this circle in
cludes the mouths of all the great
rivers of the Sound The great logging
highways, the Skagit, the Stillaguamish,
the Snohomish. the Duwamish, the Puy-
aliup, the Nisqualiy. the Skokomish rivers,
and lakes Samamish and Washington,
which, with their tributaries, afford
thousands of miles of waterway, lined
with forests. They bear down annually
hundreds of millions of feet of logs, which
are doomed for market at their mouths.
The immense logging plants at Little and
Big Skookum, and the Satsop and Union
river logging railroads are all within this
circle. 1t also includes the entire length
OF Hoods canal. From this il will be seen
that nearly nine-tenths of the magnificent
forest wealth of the Puget sound basin,
from the summit of the Cascades to the
summit of the Olympics, will be doomed
within radius of forty miles of Seattle.
No other region of the world can CON-
pete with Puget sound in the lumber mar
ket. The Sound, with its thousands of
miles of shore line, and hundreds of har-
bors, penetrating the densest growth Of
niercfantablc timber to be found on the
earth's surface, affords facilities for plac-
ing it in the markets of the world un-
equalled by the famous fjords of Norway.
The remotest harbor of the Sound is access
sible to the deepest draft merchant vessel
Lumber Is sawed at seaports, and loaded
directly from the mill wharf to ships and
carried to any port of the world. For over
twenty-five years lumber has been ex-
ported to South America, Australia,
Europe and Asia, and has employed in its
transportation the vessels of all maritime
nations. The Sound is now shipping
lumber to New York, Philadelphia
and Boston, transporting it 1900 miles
around the Horn and competing success
fully with the mills of Wisconsin. The
numerous harbors of the Sound afford
mill sites in the midst of raw material.
The adventurer, travelling the trails
of the Puget sound forests, buried
in their soitudes, is often brought to a
sudden realization that he is yet in part
of the civilized world by emerging from
the wilderness at Port Discovery, Port
Madison or Port Ludlow and seeing aris-
ing among the fir trees the masts of mer-
chant deet loading lumber for Honolulu,
Auckland, Melbourne and London.
Seattle is the center of this network of
harbors upon which the great mills are
located. The wealth of the timber trib-
utary to Seattle is alone sufficient to build
a great city. Lumber is one of the greatest
elements of wealth that can be tributary to
a city. 1t was the timber of the pineries
of Wisconsin and Minnesota that con-
tributed, as much as anything else, toward
making Chicago, and the lumber trade is
one of the most important interests of that
great city today. Seattle has always been
the trading center of the loggers OF the
Sound. 1t is here they buy their
spend their time when the camps are
closed. A large amount of the immense
wealth realized by the milling companies
has been invested in Seattle. The captains
of the vessels engaged in the Puget sound
lumber trade make their homes largely in
Seattle.
Seattle has now reached the position of
commercial supremacy of the Sound that
makes every industry, wherever it may be
located, its tributary. Every center that
springs up on one of the innumerable har-
bors of the Sound is but ganglion in the
commercial nervous system that radiates
from Seattle. As such commercial CEN
ter the timber wealth of Western WASH
ington yields it magnificent tribute of
the millions of foreign gold brought here
annually from the great markets of the
world by the lumber trade.