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Feather River Pine Mills Records
MSS.191
MSS.191
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Title: Feather River Pine Mills Records
Identifier/Call Number: MSS.191
Contributing Institution:
California State University, Chico, Special Collections, Meriam Library
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
36.0 Linear feet
108 Boxes
Date (inclusive): 1920-1972
Abstract: The collection contains records of the Feather River Pine Mills Company, formerly known as the Hutchinson Lumber Company.
The records cover mill and logging operations and production, as well as forest management.
creator:
Feather River Pine Mills.
creator:
Louisiana-Pacific Corporation.
Feather River Pine Mills, Inc. was a major Northern California lumber company for a number of years. In 1920 the Hutchinson
Lumber Company (a West Virginia hardwood lumber company established in 1908 by Robert Lee Hutchinson), bought the Wheeler
timber tract northeast of Oroville. The company purchased large tracts of timber in Butte and Plumas counties in California
and began building railroad lines, sawmills, a planning mill and dry kilns. An office and plant were officially operational
in Oroville in March 1922. Hutchinson Lumber Company was the town’s major employer with over 1,100 employees (Oroville at
the time had a population of 3,500) on its payroll. Nearly everyone in Oroville, either directly or indirectly, depended upon
the lumber company’s payroll. Hutchinson Lumber Company was one of the largest lumber companies in Northern California (in
its 1925 season the company cut 100,000,000 board feet of lumber).
A. H. Land moved from West Virginia in 1922 to help improve the financial situation of the company. The western operations
were refinanced, reorganized and incorporated as the Hutchinson Company of California. Hutchinson went into receivership in
1926, excessively burdened by a huge debt load. Butte County Superior Court ordered the Oroville holdings of the company sold
to satisfy its creditors. The only bidder was A. H. Land, holder of most of the bonds. Mr. Land and Dr. O. O. Cooper reorganized
the Oroville properties of Hutchinson as Feather River Pine Mills, Inc. in April 1927.
On October 6, 1927, the Oroville mill and 50, 000, 000 board feet of lumber were completely destroyed by fire. Two days after
the fire, Feather River Pine Mills discharged over 1,100 employees. It was an economic disaster for the town. The fire brought
an economic depression to Oroville two years before it hit the rest of the country. Feather River Pine Mills wasn’t able to
resume operations immediately due to several factors. Following the fire there was litigation with the fire insurance companies
and the loss of funds due to the failure of the Detroit Trust Company where the insurance funds were deposited and then the
depression destroyed the lumber market. Subsequently they lost their insurance funds in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
bank holiday.
In 1938 they were able to secure a Federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation loan and built a new sawmill at Mooretown (now
known as Feather Falls). The former logging railroad became the common carrier Feather River Railway on May 24, 1940. From
July 1940 to July 22, 1955 the Feather River Railway operated as a common carrier. Resumption of lumbering operations again
provided employment for Oroville, although not on the scale of the operations in the early 1920’s. Mr. Land organized National
Wood Treating Company as a subsidiary in 1947. The plant was located in South Oroville. Feather River Pine Mills continued
operations until 1955 when the Land and Cooper families sold the company to Georgia-Pacific Corporation.
Georgia-Pacific immediately sold the National Wood Treating Company to Koppers Company, but retained ownership of Feather
River Railway. The Georgia-Pacific Corporation continued the Feather Falls operation with some changes made in the logging
department. The Georgia-Pacific Corporation made the woods and sawmill operations separate units, forming a new company to
take over all timber lands, logging equipment, etc. known as the Inman-Poulsen Timber Corporation. Georgia-Pacific Corporation
was the parent company to Inman-Poulsen Timber Corporation, Feather River Pine Mills Company, and Feather River Railway Company.
These three companies operated as separate entities, although the Feather River Pine Mills Company owned all of the stock
of the Feather River Railway Company. Feather River Railway was abandoned as a railroad in 1967, due to flooding of a portion
of its line by Lake Oroville, but continued for a few years as a trucking company. In 1974 the Feather Falls sawmill was closed
when the new forest products factory was opened in South Oroville. The Feather Falls Division of Georgia-Pacific became part
of Louisiana-Pacific Corporation when Georgia-Pacific split.
A majority of the records are arranged chronologically by date and company.
Hutchinson Lumber Company (1920-1927): Boxes 1-12, 14-18, 25, 51, 60, 75, 82-85, 87-91, and Folder 1 in Oversize Drawer Feather
River Pine Mills (1927-1955): Boxes 6-7, 9-65, 68-69, 73, 75, 78-79, 81-83, 85-86, 92-102, and Folder 2 in Oversize Drawer
Georgia-Pacific Corporation (1955-1997): Boxes 33, 50-51, 54-58, 60, 63-77, 79-83, 86, 105-108, and Folder 3 in Oversize Drawer
No Company or Date: Boxes 103-104, and Folder 4 in Oversize Drawer
Company records and dates overlap and although boxes have been arranged by a particular company name they may also include
various records from other companies. Correspondence may have various records intermingled within folders such as, reports,
permits, agreements, contracts, policies, bonds, newspaper articles and clippings, petitions, accounts, and estimates.
Collection is open for research, exceptions as noted.
Please Note: This institution is committed to protecting the confidentiality and privacy rights of donors and individuals
represented within the records. Some of the records may contain sensitive materials that cover personal information. The boxes
and folders that are closed are noted in the container list and refer to the following: Boxes 12, 26, 48, 52, 54, 63, and
70. They are closed for 75 years from the date of creation of the record. Please contact the Head of Special Collections for
information regarding access to these records.
No restrictions.
The collection contains records of the Hutchinson Lumber Company, Hutchinson Company of California, Feather River Railroad,
National Wood Treating Corporation, and Feather River Pine Mills Incorporated; including correspondence, field notes, journals,
minutes, Bylaws, reports, contracts, proposals, agreements, ledgers, financial statements, sales, estimates, invoices, appraisals,
taxes, affidavits, surveys, blueprints, plat maps, employee applications, job titles and pay scales, equipment, safety and
procedure manuals, inventories, and property values. The records cover mill and logging operations and production, as well
as forest management, including logging and lumber studies and reports. Some records include materials related to Inman-Poulsen
Timber Company, The Western Pacific Railroad Company, Feather Falls Store, Feather River Supply Company, Feather Falls Electric
Corporation, California Door Company, Clover Valley Lumber Company, Hogan Lumber Company, Koppers Company, Reconstruction
Finance Corporation, and Standardshares Inc. Ltd. The records also include the papers of Chief Engineer Frank Lisbon, and
General Manager Carl S. Walker. There are a large number of maps, including topographic maps, that show logged areas, railroad
right-of-ways, company ownerships, as well as blueprints showing building and machinery plans.
Feather River Pine Mills Records, MSS 191, Special Collections, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.
Feather River Pine Mills Photographs and Records, MSS 319, Special Collections, Meriam Library, California State
Immediate Source of Acquisition note
Gift from Louisiana-Pacific Corporation (Feather River Pine Mills)
Feather River Pine Mills, Inc. map [cartographic material]: showing all company holdings with adjacent government and private
lands. Special Collections, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.
Feather River Pine Mills, Inc. map [cartographic material]: showing locations of sawmill and other buildings together with
townsite at Feather Falls. Special Collections, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.
Feather River Pine Mills, Inc., map [cartographic material]: showing properties of E.W. Bradley estate located in Sec. 31
& 32. Also Sec. 4.5.6.8. & 9 in T.22 & 21N.R.9E. - M.D.B. & M. Plumas County, Calif. August 11, 1950. Feather Falls, California.
Special Collections, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.
Feather River Pine Mills Railroad line. [cartographic material] ca. 1922. Map shows Feather River Pine Mills Railroad line.
Including Main-line Railroad, Middle Fork of Feather River, South Fork of Feather River. Special Collections, Meriam Library,
California State University, Chico. Chico has digital copy only. [PC_273].
Shasta National Forest McCloud District / U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service California Region. Map shows the
McCloud District within Shasta National Forest - including forest boundaries, ranger stations, roads, rivers, lakes, geographic
features, towns, ect. San Francisco: The Service, 1955. United States. Forest Service. California Region. Special Collections,
Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.
Metsker's map of Yuba County, California. Blue line print shows townships, land grant lines, judicial townships, mines, roads,
railroads, trails, game refuges, rivers, schools, ranchos, camps, national forests, lookouts, and ranger stations. Some manuscript
additions - may indicate property ownership of the Feather River Pine Mills. San Francisco: Metsker Maps, [1939] Special Collections,
Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.
California. Division of Highways. Highway transportation survey of 1934, Butte County / State of California, Department of
Public Works, Division of Highways. [S.l.: The Division, 1934] Map shows roads, cities, streets, township and range and traffic
density within Butte County, Calif. Insets: "Index map showing relative size and position of Butte County" -- Table of "Road
and street mileage - distribution by type and traffic." Special Collections, Meriam Library, California State University,
Chico.
Butte County Road Proposal [cartographic material]: T 20 N, R 6 E ca. 1950. Map shows Butte County Road Proposal, W Bills,
Formerly Ella S Fields, ME Riley, ME Swartz, Alice Bean, Normandin, Central Pacific Railroad and Co, Jackson Mullings. Special
Collections, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.
Locomotive. [photograph] [ca. 1960] Photograph shows Feather River Railway Shay locomotive No. 2 at Feather Falls. Railroad
built in 1922 to serve the Hutchinson Lumber Company in Oroville. It was 6 to 7 days, weekly two trains a day making the trip
and carrying around 500,000 board feet of logs to the mill. The line owned and operated 250 logging cars. The mill in Oroville
burned in 1927 and the line discontinued temporarily. In 1938 the construction of the Feather River Pine Mills brought the
line into service again. Special Collections, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.
Processing of the Feather River Pine Mills Records was generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and administered
by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The [ABC repository] was awarded a Cataloging Hidden Special Collections
and Archives grant from 2010-2012, "Uncovering California's Environmental Collections," in collaboration with eight additional
special collections and archival repositories throughout the state and the California Digital Library (CDL). Grant objectives
included processing of over 33 hidden collections related to the state's environment and environmental history. The collections
document an array of important sub-topics such as irrigation, mining, forestry, agriculture, industry, land use, activism,
and research. Together they form a multifaceted picture of the natural world and the way it was probed, altered, exploited
and protected in California over the twentieth century. Finding aids are made available through the Online Archive of California
(OAC).
The library can only claim physical ownership of the collection. Users are responsible for satisfying any claimants of literary
property.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Feather River Pine Mills.
Feather River Railway.
Hutchinson Lumber Company.
Louisiana-Pacific Corporation.
Butte County (Calif.) -- Maps.
Feather Falls (Calif.)--Maps.
Logging--California, Northern--History.
Lumber and lumbering--California, Northern--History.
Lumber camps--California--Butte County--Maps.
Lumbering--California, Northern--History.
Moore Town (Calif.)--Maps.
Plumas County (Calif.)--Maps.
Uncovering California's Environmental Collections Project