Digital Bob Archive

The Worthen Lumber Mills was the name of a new corporation formed in March, 1913, with a capitalization placed at $50,000. The principal owners were Harvey S. Worthen of Juneau, F.D. Black of Seattle, and the Alaska Supply Company of Juneau which was owned by Henry Shattuck and Louis P. Shackleford of Juneau.

In February Worthen had accompanied Shattuck back from Seattle aboard the little steamer Al-ki, of which Allen Shattuck, Henry's brother, was Juneau agent. They brought with them a hundred tons of new sawmill machinery which was listed as \"saws, edgers, planers, live rolls, steam feeds and power sets.\"

Worthen, originally from New Hampshire, described as \"one of the best known mill men on the coast,\" had moved out to Seattle in 1891 and had helped to rebuild the city after its devastating fire. He had also spent a year at Ketchikan as a building contractor and when he moved to Juneau he was a partner in the Seattle cabinet-making firm of Worthen and Martin. In Juneau he and his wife, Dora, bought a house at 125 Dixon Street, and he settled down to the job of rebuilding, then running, the sawmill. The tugs Carita and Driva were used to tow in rafts of logs which were stored along the beach south of the mill until they were needed at the saws. This log storage eventually brought the mill into conflict with the Alaska Juneau Mining Company, which wanted some of the waterfront for its docks. The mining company eventually won the lawsuit.

Juneau's building boom started in 1913 as anticipated and continued during the next couple of years. Worthen encouraged home building by offering special discounts on lumber for home construction. Juneau very nearly doubled its population between 1910 and 1920. The first fisheries cold storage plant was built in 1913 and this encouraged a larger fishing fleet. The cold storage brought a decrease in the shipment of fresh halibut, but the use of wooden boxes for shipping frozen fish more than offset the loss. The war in Europe, which started in 1914, stimulated both the fishing and the timber industries, but the economy of Gastineau Channel suffered a blow with the 1917 cave-in at the Treadwell mine. That happened only shortly after the United States entered the war.

A scarcity of labor afflicted local industries as some men were drafted and others were drawn to the higher pay at the shipyards in the States. The Worthen sawmill began to have difficulty operating at full capacity because of the lack of men, and on June 1, 1918, the manpower shortage resulted in tragedy at the mill.

When the mill was shorthanded, Worthen often worked with the crew and on that Saturday afternoon he was needed at the log haul, where the sawlogs were pulled up a chute from the bay and into the mill. He and another man were fastening the haul cable to one log when another one suddenly rolled and struck Worthen in the chest. He was hurried, unconscious, to the General Hospital on Gastineau Avenue but was too badly injured to survive.