The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1899-11-03
Big N. p. Timber Land Deal.

Big N. p. Timber Land Deal.
TACOMA, Saturday, Oct. 29.-It is re-
ported here that the Northern Pacific
Railroad Company has sold all It's tim
Der land in Washington to combine
of st. Paul and Minneapolis lumber
men and that the land department of
the road has taken all this timber
tbearing land in the state off the mar
ket.
Thomas Cooper, Western land agent
OF the road, refuses to either confirm
or deny the report, but his non-com-
initial manner gives strong credence to
the rumor. He said:
II am positively forbidden to speak
about this matter. / have heard the
reports, but / will not corrol' rate or
deny them. Neither have I any thing
to say about the company's lands in
this state being taken off the market.
The whole topic is one will not dis
cuss in any shape of FORM"
Mr.. Cooper, incidentally, is the one
man in the state who knows exactly
how far negotiations have gone.
Senator Addison G. Foster, who is
connected with the st. Paul & Tacoma
sawmill, and intimately associated
with lumbermen of the "twin cities, y
said last evening that the only timber
sales he knew of were the reported
purchases of Frederick Weyerhaeuser
of st. Paul, who has been buying UP
tracts in different localities of the
state.
Another lumberman here who has
prominent connections in st. Paul
and Minneapolis said last evening that
a sale had probably been made by the
road and Weyerhaeuser was chief
among the purchasers. Said he:
"Weyerhaeuser is the timber king of
the United States, owning more stand
ing timber than any other man in the
nation. The transfer, if made, does
not include any of the arid or grazing
lands of the East side. On account OF
the depletion of the Eastern forests,
lumbermen have been anxiously look
ing, especially in the past two years,
to the timber of the Coast and Weyer-
haeuser, who is among them, is look
ing for big game. The deal is one OF
the biggest transfers of timber lands
ever made and involves an immense
sum of money"
The amount of timber land the
company owns is hard to ascertain
with any degree of accuracy, owing to
the fact of burns and the irregular
prairies south of the Sound region,
which embraces huge chunks of terri
tory. Some lumbermen here believe
that if a lumber combine has bought
the railroads lands, it will be an easy
matter to force ranchers and those
owning small tracts of timber to sell
at sacrifice rather than suffer isola-
ted by having all the timber cut
around them, their small holdings not
being of sufficient importance to war
rant logging roads and other expenses
necessary to market it.
President Mellen of the Northern
Pacific who is here, said this morning
that negotiations had been made fol-
the purchase of large block of the
Company's timber land in this state
by Eastern lumberrnen. He refused
to discuss the matter in detail, but
said that the company had great
deal of timber in the state and it want
ed to sell it and that there we're lum-
bermen who wanted to buy it. Mr.
Mellen's first move this morning was
to have long conference with
Thomas Cooper, Western land agent
OF the road, which lends color to the
rumOred sale.-Times.