The company that would come to be known as the North Bend Timber Company was incorporated in 1906 by William C. Weeks and Robert Webb Vinnedge. Weeks had had claims on timber in the Snoqualmie River region since 1889, while Vinnedge had been involved in the Vinnedge-Murdock Lumber Company since 1903. The new company was known as the North Bend Lumber Company until 1923, when Vinnedge bought Weeks' shares in the company and reorganized it as the North Bend Timber Company. Initially, the company operated a sawmill in the company town of Edgewick in King County, which was named for the two owners of the company. The sawmill opened in 1911 and operated until 1918, when a flood destroyed the sawmill as well as several houses in the town. The town of North Bend was incorporated in 1909, along with the North Bend and Eastern Railroad Company, which was used for logging operations by the company. Operations would occur here after the flood of 1918, when Edgewick was considered to be unsalvageable. Vinnedge was an important figure in Pacific Northwest logging and spoke at many events. In 1927 he became the president of the Pacific Logging Congress. He sold the company in 1944 to the Tacoma subsidiary branch of St. Regis Pulp and Paper, an Eastern corporation. Vinnedge died in 1954. (Source: Pratt River Logging Camp Evaluation by Sharon A. Boswell)
Kinsey Brothers Photographs of the Lumber Industry, 1890-1945
