It means steam-power, a vast amount of machinery, possibly a railroad, a large force of men both in the logging-camp and at the mill, with capital to set all in motion. No attempt was made at first, or at any time, by the mill company, to found a town at Hoquiam ; but the activity imparted to the lower Che- halis Valley by the company’s business led Mr. Benn, before mentioned, to lay out a town on the Chehalis and invite other lumbering establishments to locate in it by offering them a generous portion of his land. These offers were at once accepted, and the town of Aberdeen was making rapid strides before the Hoquiam Land Company was formed, which is a separate concern from the Northwestern Lumber Company which owns the Hoquiam mills.
It was organized in 1889 by John G. McMillan and J. L. Whitney. Lots were readily disposed of to residents, and newcomers were attracted to this location, which had a greater depth of water along its front and looked out on the fine expanse of the harbor. The town was a little more than a year old when I paid my respects to it with the purpose of verifying the reports of it which I had received, and had then about fifteen hundred inhabitants. I found the Northwestern Lumber Company to own thirteen hundred acres of fine timber, which would yield from two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand feet per acre. Their mill turned out from thirty-five thousand to one hundred thousand feet daily, which was used in building and street improvements with no need to export any. The company also carried on a general merchandising business amounting to two hundred and twenty thousand dollars per annum. A second milling establishment had just commenced operations. The town boasted an opera-house, gas- and waterworks, a bank, a newspaper, the Washingtonian , and a board of trade. It was just completing a hotel of metropolitan size and elegance. The chief drawback appeared to be the lack of transportation, steamship and sailing lines having not yet arranged regular schedules, and the steamboat and railroad line to the Sound being inadequate to the needs of this and all the other communities in the Gray’s Harbor country. Great improvements rapidly followed, the traveller of to-day finding increased facilities of all kinds, and a town of a growth which has called
