Digital Bob Archive

The Columbia Lumber Company of Alaska was incorporated early in 1938 by a group of Juneau and Sitka businessmen. It took over the Juneau lumber yard and building supply business of the Columbia Lumber Company of Seattle and prepared to conduct a like business in Sitka, together with a small sawmill. A Juneau lawyer, Ralph E. Robertson, was the first president of the new company, with Frank F. Rouse as secretary. The General Manager was Thomas A. Morgan, and Dan H. Moller, who had recently resigned from the Forest Service, was the Sitka manager. The company grew and expanded; the Sitka sawmill was enlarged and in time another mill was built at Whittier. By 1954 the company was cited as one of the largest industrial employers in Alaska.

In 1951 some of the principals in the Columbia Lumber Company - Thomas Morgan, L.R. Hoglns and Roy C. Avrit - acquired an interest in the Juneau Lumber Company which owned the sawmill on the south edge of town, and within a couple of years Columbia Lumber Co. people were the sole owners. That created some confusion because although Juneau Lumber remained a subsidiary for several years, it was often referred to as the Columbia Lumber Co. sawmill.

Columbia Lumber branched out in a new direction in 1952 by organizing the Alaska Plywood Corporation which built what was said to have been a million dollar plant on the waterfront just north of the sawmill and adjoining the Juneau City Dock. It began production in the summer of 1953 and turned out three million square feet of spruce plywood that year. The company was plagued by shortages of peeler logs and financing as well as labor problems and was shut down a good deal of the time. That noble experiment came to a sudden end on August 14, 1959, when the big plant burned in one of Juneau's most spectacular fires.

In the meanwhile the Juneau Lumber Company, under the presidency of T.A. Morgan and with first Roy Avrit, then Frank Charlton running the mill, experienced very good years in 1957 through 1963, employing from 45 to 55 men, operating seven and eight months each year, and turning out from seven to eight million board feet of lumber annually.

But 1963 was the last year a sawmill operated on the site. In the spring of 1964 it was announced that there would be a delay in the start of sawing because the dock needed red riving and there were no piling on hand for the job. Not long after that most of the sawmill site was sold to the Foss-Alaska Company which was taking over the Southeastern Alaska operations of the Alaska Steamship Company. A portion of the site was also utilized as a staging area for the ferry terminal. The sawmill machinery, according to Thomas A. Morgan, was pretty well worn out and most of it was scrapped.

Jorgenson, Shattuck, Worthen, Rutherford, Chaney, Canoles and Morgan successively used the site for sawmilling for more than 60 years, but it now appears that never again will there be the whine of the saws, the clouds of mixed steam and woodsmoke, and the smell of new cut lumber in downtown Juneau.