If You Want a Chance to Doubt Your Own Eyes, Go Look atLongview

By Jack Dionne

Yes, folks, I've been to Longview. Longview, in the free state of Washington. Longview "where rolls the Oregon", as William Cullen Bryant so immortally wrote. (For the Columbia, Queen among the world's majestic rivers, is "The Oregon" that the poets used to rave about, for that rvas what it was originally called.)

I am not going to attempt for a moment to give you a description-even of the vaguest-of that amazing lumbering town and institution. Scores of articles have appeared in these columns, concerning Longview. Scores of pictures have been printed to illustrate its facts and features. But the effort is totally unavailing. 'No camera can begin to depict the mightiness of that sawmill plant, and no words can begin to impress the mentality of the reader. You've got to see it.

I am wondering, horvever, if I can't pick out a few high lights that will in some way reflect the rvonderment that. I felt at seeing Longview. No use trying a description. Going over the equipment and the measurements of that plant would simply bewilder the reader.

I was fairly well chaperoned in seeing the mills at l,ongview. I like to go to headquarters for mv information, and when I hoofed it over the Longvierv plant thore was with me Messrs. R. A. Long, M. B. Nelson, John D. Tennant, J. H. Foresman and Roy Morse, as well as other dignitaries. Just the Chairman of the Board, the President, two of the Vice Presidents and the General Manager. I'11 say I rvas escorted.

Can you imagine a sawmill plant so great in size and so wondrous in construction that they entertain an average of two hundred tourist visitors and sightseers every working day; pay and keep three uniformed guides who take you through the plant and explain and show it all to the visitor, without cost, and without a tip; that is so laid out throughout every portion of the sa'il'mills, planers, sheds, etc,, that the runways for tourists are inarked with signs and arrows just life a California highway-"Visitors follow the arrow"? Can you imagine it? And it takes several hours for even a casual survey of the mill plant itself.

Can you visualize a sawmill plant three miles and across a great river from the Pacific Highway, 'with gauge of management so broad and far-sighted that they built a detour from the highway, through Longview, and back to the Highway ? The bridge over the river cost $450,000. The broad concrete road cost more than $100.000 more. This, so that the tourists who throng that Highway, coming from every part of the United States, may detour and see the Long-Bell town and plant at Longview.

Can you appreciate a lumber firm r,vith that much faith in their ADVERTISING?

That's what you will find at Longview. And the Highway is well marked so that the tourist will know all about it, and the road and bridge are so fine and the sights at Longview so unusual, that an average of trvo hundred men, women and children a day'go through the plant. Additional hundreds look the town over, see this rose blooming in the midst of the Washington forest primeval, and drive on.

Three years ago the place lvhere Longview stands was a cut-over land flat on the bank of the mighty Columbia. They laid out a city of 50,000 in the beginning, so far as streets, improvements, districts, etc., are concerned. Wiil they get that number? No man who thinks and knows, can doubt it. Beautiful public buildings, library, Y.M.C.A., hospitals, hotel, beautiful streets rvith running rvater and es- planades and flowers. No happenstance, this Longview. It was all arranged scientifically in advance. You leave the forest road and in a few minutes are in a beautiful city so well arranged and improved that it looks more like a restricted park than the business and residence department of a sawmill.

There are 11,000 people in Longview now. They have just arranged for a huge paper mill to be built right near the sawmills. Another great payroll. More homes, more contented people. The ground is laid out for other manufacturing and re-manufacturing plants to come. There will be a big veneer plant, a big door and window plant, and other natural sidelines to a great milling institution. They will come as fast as they can be reached in the great operation of development. When these things alone are completed, there will be more than 20,000 people in Longview. With room and opportunity and welcome for independent industries of many kinds. Weyerhaeuser is to build a huge milling plant at the mouth of the Cowlitz River, at Longview. More thousands of men, and their families. Everything is new, everything attractive, everything architecturally interesting, everything well painted. Pavements, modern improvements, attractiveness everywhere. That's Longview.

And the mill ! There is only one way to describe it, and that is to quote the time-honored story of the countryman rvho saw the elephant for the first time, and rubbing his eyes, and shaking his head, turned away saying-"Hell ! There ain't no sech animal". And yet, it's there. I know because I saw it.

A few illustrative facts. Can you imagine a sawmill with shed room for ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY MILLION FEET OF DRY LUMBER? And all the room being practically utilized?

Can you picture in your mind's eye two separate sawmills, standing side by side that cut almost TWO MILLION FEET OF LUMBER EVERY DAY.

Or a planer that has six planing machines and turns out over 700,000 feet of lumber in eight hours ? Well, they've got two separate planers, each doing that.

Can you picture a sawmill cutting nearly a million feet of lumber a day, without even a storage yard? That is the way the new East Unit is built and equipped. Everything except water shipped stock goes under cover.

There are two mill units. One was built first, the West Upit, a huge rivestern sawmill, backed by a super-modernized drying, dressing, handling and re-manufacturing plant. The sawmill has two head-rigs, big band saws, one double cutting, one singfe cutting. These saws just "break down" the big logs. The gang, and the battery of resaws and edgers do the rest. And every day they operate that mill they turn out between a million and eleven hundred thousand feet of lumber.

The new East Unit is an oversized Southern Pine mill. It contains four band mills. It is used for cutting the smaller size of logs. The big timber goes to the \A/est Unit. The new lJnit cuts about three-quarters of a million feet a day.

Thirty-five per cent of the entire production of this plant is timbers. The water shipping dock is tremendous in size, all concrete, laden with tremendous quantities of timbers of every size, length and kind. Five big ocean vessels load there at the same time. Every modern facility for handling the timbers is there.

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