By Steve Williams, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER
One hundred and sixteen years ago in 1905, a huge lumber mill began operations at the northeast corner of Lake Sammamish in Washington State. James Campbell and L.B. Stedman invested $100,000 (over 30 million in today's dollars) and logged a major portion of the land east of the lake during the next two decades. They built an entire company town at Adelaide to support the mill; including a store, hotel, blacksmith shop, tool house, foreman family home and bunkhouses for 50 men.
Key to the whole operation was the Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad which ran along the shoreline between the mill and town. It had been been built by Daniel Gillman in 1889 and provided direct shipment to Seattle and other northwest destinations. Seattle expanded from a population of 3,533 in 1880 to 237,194 in 1910, and all those people needed housing. Because the railroad was there first, most of the mill was actually built on pilings extending out over Lake Sammamish.
OR/L 79.79.145 - Campbell Mill, Lake Sammamish, 1905.
The lumber company had three locomotives of its own and laid 16 miles of track across the virgin timber lands east of Redmond and Lake Sammamish. Bunkhouses for the lumberjacks were built on rail car frames and could be hauled into the woods to the end of spur lines where the trees were being cut. The logs were hauled back to the mill location, also called Campton, and were dumped in the lake for storage until they could be milled into lumber. The water washed off dirt and rocks, and prevented drying out – all of which was better for the saw blades. “Ponding” also allowed the logs to be easily sorted and moved about, and that resulted in pilings and large log booms at the north end of the lake. Old timers said that “There were so many logs that you could practically walk from one side of the lake to the other on them.”
OR/L 79.79.061 - Weber's Tug Boat, "Daisy."
The Campbell Mill operated for nineteen years, but was lost to fire in 1924 when the firemen discovered that their unused hoses had rotted and were full of holes. Many early mills and houses suffered the same fate as embers from wood-burning stoves and steam engines dropped onto wood-shinged roofs. The Lake Sammamish Shingle Mill was also located on the east shore, just south at Weber Point, and The Monohon Mill was further south towards the end of the lake near Issaquah. Beginning in the 1880's, Redmond had at least 12 different mills, but the big time logging was nearly done by 1930. Within 50 years most of the old growth prime timber had been cut and the land was ready for stump-pulling, row-farming and dairy herds.
Today, if you go boating at the north end of Lake Sammamish you can discover rows of pilings that once supported the mill or held the log booms in place. Now, those pilings make a great protective nursery for young fish, and a hangout for all sorts of ducks and other wildlife. You can also join the Mountains to Sound Greenway in planting conifer seedlings to do your part in restoring a bit of northwest forest. Our forests help limit climate change by storing carbon, reducing flooding, evaporation and lowering temperatures. The extraction economy of a century ago is being replaced by a restoration economy of carbon credits and tree planting today.
Resources
“Our Town Redmond” by Nancy Way, Marymoor Museum, Redmond, Washington 1989.
“Index of Lumber Businesses & Mills” by Eric Erickson, Issaquah Historical Society 2003.
“Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition”by Shauna & Brennan O'Reilly, Arcadia Publishing 2009.
“Seattle in the 1880's” by David Buerge, The Historical Society of Seattle and King County, 1986.
Redmond Historical Society website - www.redmondhistoricalsociety.org 2021.
Photos from Eastside Heritage Center collection
