Description
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.
Background
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).