L.T. Murray moved the operations of his West Fork Logging Company to Mineral in 1927. He bought out the Mineral Lake Lumber Company at that time and set about creating a model permanent logging camp. He remodeled old buildings and built new ones and established lawns and flower beds and a yearly painting schedule. He provided steam heated railroad cars to take his crews to and from the logging sites and had a hot lunch taken out to the crews each day. St. Regis Paper Company bought out the West Fork Logging Company's operation in Mineral in 1943.
Mineral is a small logging and shingle mill village on Mineral Lake, 14 miles north of Morton in north central Lewis County. Once it had several producing mines, the ore from which was used for production of arsenic. It was named for mineral deposits along Mineral Creek, and producing mines a half dozen miles from the town.The falling crew consisted of fallers and buckers. Fallers cut down trees and buckers saw the felled trees into lengths. Loggers used to use seven, eight, or nine-foot long saws, with a man on each end. These loggers faced great danger from trees falling or rolling on them.
Faller on the left is Louis Truitt. [Source: Felt, Margaret Elley. The Enterprising Mister Murray, Pacific Northwest Logger. Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1978.]
Kinsey Brothers Photographs of the Lumber Industry, 1890-1945
