On June 4, 1888, the St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Co. incorporates. The incorporators are lumber and real estate magnates who arrive that day by train from Minnesota and Wisconsin. The next day Tacoma headlines shout the event: "The monster milling company of Tacoma organized." The firm, known locally as the St. Paul, spurs what the historian Murray Morgan calls the greatest boom in Tacoma's history. Before the firm was incorporated these entrepreneurs had purchased 80,000 acres of Pierce County timberland, mostly Douglas fir, from the Northern Pacific Railroad's land grant. They had received from the Railroad a small island on the Tacoma waterfront called "the boot" and had purchased other land as well. By 1889, they had built the mill, laid tracks into the forest, established camps and skidroads, and were transporting 50 carloads of logs a day into Tacoma for processing. The St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Company was in business until 1947, when it was bought out by the St. Regis Paper Company.
Ohop is a small settlement in the Ohop Valley a dozen miles west of Mt. Rainier in central Pierce County. It was first called Stringtown because the residents lived along a single road in the valley. The name is an adaption of the Indian word, Ow-hap, meaning pleasant.
St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber's camp no. 3 was built at Little Ohop Creek in 1914 and was abandoned in 1940.
Yarding is the act or process of pulling logs from the woods to a landing or loading site.
A cold deck is a stack of logs left in the woods for later transportation.
Kinsey Brothers Photographs of the Lumber Industry, 1890-1945
