The community of Dalkena was once the village of Dalkena, supported solely by, first the D & K Mill Company, and later the Dalkena Lumber Company. At its peak the village had a population of possibly 100, possibly a few more. About the only facility of any kind in the village was the "Company Store", a general store which supplied essentially all the needs of the populace. The town was started commensurate with the D & K Mill, sometime in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
The village and the mill, by then the Dalkena Lumber Company mill, prospered until the beginning of the Great Depression, with the mill burning in 1936 or 1937. Given the economic climate and the depletion of local timber resources, the mill was never rebuilt. The village essentially died with the mill. Today on the site of Dalkena is a church, the
Dalkena Community Church and a combination fire hall/paramedic service. About 10 houses remain scattered about within the old town limits, the next nearest structures being farm buildings.
There's a cool old barn nearby too...
The Dalkena Lumber Company was formed in December 1908 as a corporation in the state of Washington. It harvested timber in northeast Washington's Stevens and Pend Oreille counties and manufactured lumber at its mill for the next 30 years. The company's predecessor, the D & K Mill Company, had built a lumber mill and associated structures ten miles northwest of Newport, along the Clark Fork River, a townsite took the name "Dalkena," after the surnames of the D & K Mill Company's founders, Dalton and Kennedy.
In 1908, a group of investors headed by James G. Wallace and John G. Ballord, partners in the Wallace-Ballord Lumber Company of Minneapolis, purchased the D & K Mill Company from Hugh Kennedy, one of its founders. The Wallace-Ballord Lumber Company had interests in the region and maintained local offices in Seattle and Spokane. Wallace, Ballord, and Kennedy became principal stock holders in the new Dalkena Lumber Company, with relatives and others included as minority investors.
Relatively little is known of the day-to-day operations of the Dalkena Lumber Company from the 1910s to the 1930s. The town of Dalkena did grow to become a community of perhaps nearly one hundred, with the company's general store the hub of activity for townspeople and local homesteaders.
The Dalkena Lumber Company's mill complex burned down in 1936 or 1937. It was never rebuilt. The company store was spared and continued to serve the local community for several years.
From Washington State University
Following is the entry from the American Series book,
Washington: A guide to the Evergreen State.
DALKENA, 11.4 m. (alt. 2,000; pop. 25) an almost deserted village, stands slightly above the river. On both sides of the tracks of a branch line of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway are the remains of a big lumber mill that burned in 1935—the planer, the dry kiln, and the burner, all stripped of machinery, and the charred remains of the mill itself. A few dilapidated houses and a little schoolhouse are scattered up the hill. In 1902 the Dalton and Kennedy Sawmill was built, and for a number of years the town prospered. Even before the destruction of the mill, however, the supply of timber was nearing exhaustion. Still visible in the river are jam breakers, resembling lean-to huts on pilings; and below is a quiet lagoon where a few years ago thousands of logs floated.
From Washington: A guide to the Evergreen State