When Timber was the Lifeblood of Bend - Oregon Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

The When Timber was the Lifeblood of Bend sign is located east of the footbridge in Farewell Bend Park.

  
Marker Name: When Timber was the Lifeblood of Bend - For over 20 years, Bend was home to two of the largest pine mills in the world.
Marker Text: After depleting resources in the Midwest, timber barons purchased thousands of acres of forest in central Oregon and built two large mills just downriver from here. The Shevlin-Hixon and Brooks-Scanlon mills began operations in 1916, processing virgin ponderosa pine into lumber.
At the height of mill production during World War I, Bend’s economy was booming along with the population, growing from 1500 people in 1915 to over 5000 in 1920. Almost everyone in town worked for the timber industry in some way. Women working at the mill made ammunition boxes.
By the late 1920’s, mills ran round the clock with three shifts of 1500 employees. As the 7 a.m. whistle woke the morning crew, the graveyard shift was going to bed. Millwork was hard, dusty and dangerous but offered the highest wages in town.
This stretch of the Deschutes River was filled with logs waiting to be processed. To keep the log pond full, 80 to 95 rail cars carried harvested trees from the woods to town daily, unloading them into the river just below the present site of the Bill Healy Bridge.
“The product (ponderosa pine timber) is fast becoming favorably known from coast to coast. So far this year, lumber, lath and boxes have been shipped to 27 of the United States and some even to the far-off island of Cuba.” Pine Echoes, Sept. 1919.

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