TIMBER ROOTS

The land for the first Mason County sawmill was staked in 1853 by Col. Simmons on Hammersley Inlet to allow easy access to shipping, the mill produced 12,000 board feet a day, but the mill did not survive its first winter when it was destroyed by heavy rains.

Early loggers used two-handled cross-cut saws and axes to fall trees. Springboards were inserted to create a platform to avoid the lower part of the trunk that fans out making it difficult to drag the tree across the forest floor. A wedge cut was axed into the tree to encourage it to fall in a particular direction. Oxen dragged the logs over timbers known as a “skid” road.

Mills were at Port Gamble and Seabeck on Hood Canal. When nearby timber was run out, mills hired lumbermen up and down the Canal to made giant floats of logs, barging logs to the mills.

Simpson Logging Company

Simpson Logging Company was started by Sol Simpson in the 1890s. Simpson connected camps throughout Mason County by transporting logs by steam locomotives and technologies such as the donkey engine – a steam driven winch that could pull logs.

Simpson and his partner Anderson changed the way logging companies looked at land and were proponents to sustainable tree practices. Today Simpson’s descendants – the Reed Family –own 1.37 million acres of land across the Northwest, making them