Although he was nervous about the United States and Britain haggling over where to draw the boundary for Oregon Country, John McLoughlin, chief factor of Hudson’s Bay Company, ordered a sawmill built on the outflow from Columbia Springs in 1828.
Using a muley saw on a crankshaft, the mill’s capacity was 1,500 board feet a day. William Cannon, a onetime blacksmith and HBC employee, ran it as the first millwright. Hawaiians holding three-year contracts with HBC and working for low wages plus meals were the company’s preferred millworkers. Except for Sundays, holidays and breakdowns, employees worked round-the-clock shifts.
About 10 yoke of oxen dragged logs to the mill for cutting and later pulled milled lumber to the shore of the Columbia River. There, men bound the boards into rafts, floated them down the river to Fort Vancouver, or loaded them onto anchored ships to go overseas. Some of the first boards cut by the original mill went to California, South America and Hawaii. California paid $60 for 1,000 board feet.
Muley sawmills, which have an up-and-down action, reach back to the Romans. The circular saw came in the early 1800s. Some historians credit a Brit who received a patent in 1777. Others support an American Shaker, Tabitha Babbitt, who attached a metal disc to her spinning wheel in 1810.
Whoever invented them, circular saws were more efficient, and cut straighter, smoother boards. Before this, pioneers felled a tree and used axes and adzes to smooth boards — a tedious and backbreaking process that turned out rough boards with two somewhat even sides that more or less fit together for building. This technique also kept domiciles small and their floors dirt. Boards from sawmills fit together tighter and offered flooring.
The HBC sawmill was often rebuilt and moved. Renovated in 1838, HBC added a blacksmith shop. It also more than doubled its production capacity to 3,400 board feet a day, using 12 saws. Although it employed 25 to 30 men, the lack of experienced sawmillers kept it from reaching total capacity.
The year 1843 saw London millwright William Crate build another sawmill closer to the falls. A 10-foot-wide and 16-foot-diameter waterwheel drove 12 saws around the clock. The Gold Rush sucked mill employees south to California, and the mill closed for lack of workers. It sat deserted until 1853 when its rotten timbers collapsed under their own weight.
HBC erected and ran a one-saw mill beside Crate’s, but it faded fast. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 settled the border dispute between the U.S. and Britain, and both sides jointly held the fort while HBC slowly withdrew. Yet HBC commissioned Crate to build another mill in 1852. Assembling it took a crew of 10 men working for months, but the fur company abandoned it and moved its Northwest headquarters to Canada eight years later.
Soon after, Ervine and Margaret Taylor claimed 320 acres where the last HBC mill sat. They ran it until 1862 when Lewis Love bought it. A Portland entrepreneur, Love owned a steamship company, a mercantile and a hotel. He added a gristmill on the site. Love’s sawmill operated until 1930, when his bank foreclosed on it during the Great Depression.
Martin Middlewood is editor of the Clark County Historical Society Annual. Reach him at ClarkCoHist@gmail.com.
