Former workers, families invited to Pack River Lumber Company reunion

(On Sept. 18, 2010, a reunion of the Pack River Lumber Company is planned for all the employees, and family members, of the Colburn and Dover mills. It will be held at the Community Hall in Sandpoint from 10: a.m. to noon. The event is sponsored by your Bonner County Daily Bee and more information will be forthcoming in future issues of the paper. Below are excerpts from a story about Pack River compiled by David Gunter from old newspapers for Bobbie Brown Huguenin. Both gave their consent for it to be shared.)

The Brown family tells a story about how Jim Brown, Jr., used to insist the pioneer spirit stopped before it reached him. His ancestors blazed trails into the Northwest in covered wagons. Wanderlust had driven them to seek new places, new adventures. Their travels, Jim told his daughters, had brought the family to “the most beautiful place on earth”, and he was happy to stay put in Bonner County.

The history of the Pack River Company shows that the spirit was as strong as ever. As its leader, Jim pioneered new milling and production techniques and built a lasting leg¬acy in north Idaho and beyond.

In 1939, Jim borrowed $500 on his car and started the Sand Creek Lumber Company. More commonly known as the “Deadhead Logging Company,” the mill earned the nick¬name because of its system of salvaging sink¬ers from the old Humbird millpond on Lake Pend Oreille. Records were kept in an old apple box and Brown took turns with his roommate, Jack Bopp, going out to the mill to keep the boiler fired at night. The company’s first lum¬ber sale netted a whopping $156.

Two years later the Pack River Lumber Company started operations with a mill at Colburn. For logs, the mill depended almost entirely on farmers clearing their land. The Sand Creek mill was dismantled and shipped to Thompson Falls, Montana, in 1942. That mill also started out with no timber resources, relying on logs from the open market. All that was about to change, however.

The area’s vast timber stands began to feed the Brown mills in the mid-to-late 40s as Jim successfully bid on millions of board feet at sites like the Cherry Creek drainage and Ruby Creek tracts. Pack River worked out a deal with the Northern Pacific Railway to transfer more than 60,000 acres of land and timber from the Priest River divide to the Montana state line.

At the same time, the company expanded into mills at other north Idaho locations. The new operations were more than just sawmills - the Dover plant included a planing mill and dry kilns. After World War II, Jim’s brother, Larry, joined the company and eventually took over the former Winton Lumber Company near Coeur d’Alene. Renamed the Northwest Tim¬ber Company, that mill also housed an on-site factory where secondary wood products were produced for market.

Innovative solutions were always a hall¬mark of Pack River operations. In the winter of 1948-49, mills around the region shut down because of frozen millponds in the sub-zero temperatures. Against all odds, Pack River employees like mechanic Ken Critchell helped to come up with ways to keep the timber moving through the mill. Outside the Colburn plant, steam was piped into the pond from the mill itself while a pair of outboard motors kept the water moving. At times, dynamite blasts were used to loosen up the ice. It was no easy task, but the mill kept two shifts working through the bitter cold.

Behind the scenes, Jim pioneered another phase of the timber industry: the search to get more out of logs than just lumber. At a small research laboratory at the Dover mill, ways were sought to make use of waste materials like planer ends, trims, low-grade lumber and sawmill residues. The early 50s saw Pack River investigating a new process using wood wafers and resin to manufacture a particle board product called Tenex. Four years were spent experimenting with production tech¬niques before the new building board was ready for the market. Construction of the $750,000 Tenex plant started on July 1, 1954, and the following summer, 50 men were at work turning out more than 50 tons of boards daily.

Jim Brown, Jr., died on April 17, 1989.