Digital Bob Archive

Sawmill and Fire are two words that have very frequently appeared in the same newspaper headline, but for more than 40 years Juneau escaped a local application of the headline. Between 1902, when James P. Jorgenson built his sawmill on the south edge of town, and the late afternoon of Tuesday, February 29, 1944, there had been no major fire at the mill. Disaster struck on that Leap Year day.

After a couple of lean years at the beginning of the 1930s, the Juneau Lumber Mills had weathered the Great Depression fairly well and had operated for from five to seven months each year. There had, however, been some rough spots.
On August 27, 1936, a Thursday, the mill workers walked off the job, demanding higher wages. By Saturday night, however, an agreement was reached between the management and the newly organized union. The minimum wage was increased by 55 cents a day to $4.40. Men on the green chain got an 80-cent boost, to $4.80 an hour.

More improvements were made to the sawmill in 1937, financed by a new $100,000 bond issue. Six per cent coupon bonds were offered in denominations of $100, $500 and $1,000, and local buyers snapped up $75,000 worth at once. The entire issue was sold; $87,000 of the proceeds was used to retire 1927 bonds; the rest went into financing a new boiler house, steam turbine, warehouse, electric planer, refuse burner and blower system, and much of the yard that had been on piling was filled with AJ rock. The mill that year cut nine million board feet of lumber.

The military build-up of the late 1930s and the war years that followed pushed the Juneau sawmill to capacity. In July, 1941, mill manager Roy Rutherford reported that orders on hand exceeded production capacity. A big portion of the orders were from the company's Anchorage lumber yard, for local housing.

The war years were both busy and, because of labor shortages, frustrating.
Late in the fall of 1943 the mill closed, partly because of very cold weather and partly for an overhaul that would permit an early start-up in the spring. The overhaul was about completed by the late afternoon of February 29, 1944, when an electric thawing device was being used on water pipes near the edger. It generated more heat than was wanted and the fire department was called.

The Juneau Volunteer Fire Department, the Douglas Fire Department, the Coast Guard and an Army unit from the Subport of Embarcation responded quickly but despite their best efforts the main building burned and there was heavy damage to the equipment in it. The dry kilns and power plant were untouched, but the loss was placed at $200,000. Instead of opening during the first week of March, it was June 16 before cutting could resume and it was handicapped then by a shortage of labor. Men who had been ready to go to work in March had drifted off to other jobs and it was announced that 40 more men were needed than showed up.

It may have been that Roy Rutherford decided to get out of the business as soon as the war ended and a buyer could be found.