Company Towns of the Pacific Northwest

by Linda Carlson

2004 Washington State Book Award Finalist

"Company town." The words evoke images of rough-and-tumble loggers and gritty miners, of dreary shacks in isolated villages, of wages paid in scrip good only at price-gouging company stores, of paternalistic employers. But these stereotypes are outdated, especially for those company towns that flourished well into the twentieth century. In Company Towns of the Pacific Northwest , Linda Carlson provides a more balanced and realistic look at these "intentional communities."

Drawing from residents’ reminiscences, contemporary newspaper accounts, company newsletters and histories, census and school records, and site plans, Carlson looks at towns in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. She examines how companies went about controlling housing, religion, taxes, liquor, prostitution, and union organizers. This vibrant history gives the details of daily life in communities that were often remote and subject to severe weather. It looks at the tragedies and sawmill accidents, mine cave-ins, and avalanches as well as Independence Day picnics, school graduations, and Christmas parties. Finally, it tells what happened when people left--when they lost their jobs, when the family breadwinner died or was disabled, when the mill closed.

An ample selection of illustrations, most never previously published, broadens the appeal of this lively and well-researched book.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2003

About the author

Northwest native, graduate of Washington State University's journalism program, and started out editing the Davenport (WA) Times and stringing for a Spokane metro daily. Ran PR programs for the American Plywood Association before driving cross country in an MG-B to move to Boston for an MBA at Harvard. Worked in marketing ever since. Taught sales management at University of Puget Sound when it had a night MBA program in Seattle. Four years on the Humanities Washington speakers bureau discussing company-owned towns in Washington and Oregon. Twenty years as career adviser for the state's HBS alumni club.

Reviews

[Gabriel Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read a few chapters of this initially and then ended up reading the whole thing out of order so thought I’d log it on ‘ere. I want to use the phrase “false utopian” to describe company towns but that feels too totalising. I feel like there’s a rlly strange mix of utopia and dystopia within them and in the nineteenth century it seems like a lot of the most isolated among them were essentially tiny kingdoms with entirely private economies. It’s definitely anarcho-capitalist but I also don’t want to write off the fact that some of them were genuine communities with levels of social cohesion I think we often yearn for now, even though I think in principle any kind of corporate paternalism is probably a bad thing. The book is also super easy to read and relatively short.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book seems well researched, but I am disappointed with the presentation. The author seems interested in making sweeping generalizations about company towns; but, It is hard to compare a 1890's logging camp in the Olympics, with a 1910's clay harvesting company in King county. The comparisons are harder to draw when WWII era Richland is included. For example, providing a three room house with no plumbing to a worker would have been luxurious in one situation and a hardship in another. Another example, the types of jobs women could hold seems far less capricious if taken in the context of the culture of the day.
After a General chapter about what company towns are, a town by town treatment would have been preferable.

[Jerrod · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh... 2019 is giving me way too many 2-star books. This book provides a sketch of life in various company towns... so varied that you can't make heads or tails of it. Charts and graphs would have been nice, maybe maps with population bubbles, trends over time... I get that this was published in 2003 before the data science revolution, but there are definite summaries of the data that a high school stats student would ask for and would inform the reader much more than the words that were put on the page. Each chapter covers a topic around company town life: religion, housing, social life, etc. Some of it is interesting, but again, the story is an inch deep and a mile wide. I learned a little bit, but I couldn't recommend it to anyone.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw this on a bookshelf in Newhalem and pounced. If you are the sort of person to pounce on a book like this, it is worth five stars! If you have no idea why someone would read it... it is not the book for you.

[Sarah Jowett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent look at company towns, totally changed my outlook on them, at least based on the ones in Pacific Northwest....

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book in preparation for writing a brief article on books on company towns for a Friends of the Library newsletter. Instead of scanning it and extracting a few details, I ended up reading and enjoying the whole book. Carlson focuses on company towns in Washington, Idaho and Oregon and provides a list of the towns with summary information in the appendix. The book is organized around topics such as who built the towns, housing, education, recreation, company stores, newspapers, the Depression, World Wars, and closing down the towns. I was surprised that the book describes most company towns intentional communities where people took pride in and enjoyed living in their towns. I expected towns built on logging and coal mining, but company towns were also based on copper or lime mining, clay and rock quarries, lumber and shingle mills, railroads, steel mills, electricity, shipbuilding, and World War II atomic bomb projects.
I was surprised to learn that Port Gamble and Roche Harbor were both originally company towns. Roche Harbor on San Juan Island, Washington, was built by John McMillin in the late 1800s to support a lime quarry and mill. It had an elegance not generally expected in a company town and hosted several important people, including President Teddy Roosevelt. One of my favorite stories was about Valsetz Oregon, an isolated lumber mill company town. The town newspaper was started in1937 by the young daughter of the cookhouse managers. Her newspaper became famous among news people and her columns reprinted in papers across the United States,
Not my usual type of reading, but very interesting, probably because I know many of the towns that Carlson highlights.

[Beth Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting book about company-owned towns in the northwest. You definitely must be interested in American history or Pacific Northwest history specifically to enjoy this book. It is quite detailed about a niche in American history. These towns in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho all started out as single employer towns, in which the land, factory or plant, and services are all provided by the employer. These are mainly mining or timber towns. The book goes further to explore how people travelled, what they did in their spare time, what schools and churches were available, what they did for food, etc. Many of these towns were very remote and often snowed in for the winter. Most do not exist any more, but a few still stand, with interesting historic buildings and old time cemeteries. There are also numerous historic photos, from all over the Northwest. There is also a detailed bibliography for those who wish to read further. This book depicts an interesting chapter in American history.