About St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Company: 1888-1958
The St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber company was founded in 1888 by four experienced lumbermen from the upper Midwest who incorporated the business for 1.5 million dollars. The purchase of 80,000 acres of prime forest from the Northern Pacific Railway in Southeast Pierce County was the largest purchase of privately owned timberlands to date. By 1898, St. Paul & Tacoma Co. had grown into one of the largest lumber producers in Washington and employed the largest work force in Tacoma, as well as hundreds of loggers and mill workers from many rural communities in the county. Historian Jesse Clark McAbee examines the lasting effects of this company's history on present-day Tacoma.
Jesse Clark McAbee is a museum professor and historian with a bachelor's degree in history from Washington State University and a certificate in museum studies from the University of Washington. He served in the United States Naval Reserves from 1981-91 as an Air Intelligence Officer and Electronic Warfare Officer with assignments in Hawaii and Sicily, and special duty in Washington, D.C. McAbee was director of historical museums in Washington state and Northern California. He won the Department of Archeology and Historic Preservation Valerie Sivinski Award in 2011 for his work as project manager for the restoration of the Morton Historic Train Depot. McAbee is author of several articles for Columbia Magazine, and Tall Timber Short Lines (previously The Timber Beast) magazine, among other publications, and he co-authored Rails to Paradise: The History of the Tacoma Eastern Railroad.