Digital Bob Archive

The Juneau Spruce Corporation, on April 30, 1947, became the owner of the sawmill to the south of downtown Juneau. This was a new million dollar company, owned primarily in Oregon, which had purchased the assets of the Juneau Lumber Company, including a lumber yard in Anchorage and a lumber yard and sawmill in Fairbanks, and of the Juneau Logging Company and Juneau Motorship Company. Roy Rutherford, who had managed the sawmill properties since 1919, stayed on as a consultant for 30 days, then retired to a home in Seattle where he died in December, 1958.

H.F. Chaney of Portland was president of Juneau Spruce and E.S. Hawkins was vice president and resident manager. Members of the Board of Directors were Oregon men, several of whom were associated with the Coos Bay Lumber Company. An expansion program for the Juneau mill was announced and in July, 1947, the company approached the City of Juneau with an offer to buy the City Dock as a part of that program. The dock, however, was under lease to the Northland Transportation Company until 1950. Juneau Spruce said it needed the property at once and that it might be forced to find property elsewhere. Whether that was or was not a threat to move the sawmill is not clear, but it continued to cut lumber in the existing mill until the end of the year.

After being shut down since December for improvements, the mill reopened on March 10, 1948, on the same old site. The company, according to Manager Hawkins, had expended $2,500,000 on the Juneau mill, the Edna Bay logging plant and on floating equipment including a new tug, named the Henry F. Cheney for the company president. The mill could produce 100,000 board feet of lumber in an eight-hour shift, Hawkins said at start-up, and this would increase to 125,000 feet within ten days. He said he hoped soon to put on a second shift and to cut 60 million board feet that year.

That was not to be. Using sawmill workers, who belonged to the International Woodworkers of America, the company began loading a million feet of lumber on a barge for Prince Rupert. The local longshoremen, members of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, picketed the mill. The mill workers did not cross the picket line and the mill shut down. After a month the mill workers accepted a proposal by Mayor Waino Hendrickson and went back to work despite the continued picket line. Hawkins resigned as manager but remained with the company; Freeman Schultz took over as manager.

But there were more problems. The longshoremen got the Prince Rupert longshoremen to refuse to handle Juneau Spruce cargo with a threat to stop all shipments of Alaska frozen fish through that port.

Juneau Spruce filed suit against the ILWU for $190,000 and after a long trial before Judge George W. Folta, a Juneau jury awarded the company $175,000. The company in time collected most of that amount. An injunction was also issued to prevent the longshoremen interfering with company operations.

It looked like fairly smooth sailing ahead for the Juneau Spruce Corporation, but in August, 1949, fire struck again.