The Place:
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 around 1902.
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, the result of a forest fire. This was the second time the mill burned, the first in 1910, again caused by a forest fire, the "Great Blowup of 1910". 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. It was never rebuilt. The company store was spared and continued to serve the local community for several years.
From Washington State University
The Person(s):
The principles of the original lumber mill, the D & K Mill, were Henry Dalton and Hugh Kennedy. The hamlet at which they built the mill was named Glencoe, but Dalton and Kennedy decided to name their mill Dalkena, after the first syllables of their surnames. The company town which they built around the mill was given the same name. Dalton and Kennedy had been lumbermen in the east, probably from the Minnesota area.
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