When Idaho became a state in 1890 the State Land Board estimated there were 23,000,000 acres of timber and Idaho. They hired C. O. Brown to decide who would be awarded the timber rights. He hired his son and son-in-law to help with selections. Upon investigation, it was found that only eighteen and a half percent of the selections were covered with timber. The U.S. Commissioner of Lands was called in on this fraudulent action, but did nothing. The Land Board realized that whoever was granted timber rights had better have lots of capitol.
An 1898 survey estimated that there were approximately 31 billion board feet of timber in the Couer d'Alene district alone. This included the most desirous of soft woods, the white pine.
G. T. Hawley, Couer d'Alene, constructed Idaho's first commercial sawmill in 1883. An army detachment had built a small sawmill in 1878 which produced enough lumber for their use.
F. K. Weyerhaeuser came to the U. S. from Germany in 1852. He started a small sawmill in Illinois. With his brother-in-law, they took profits and expanded operations into the south. Timber land grants were cheap in the west so they moved westward in 1900. The Humbird Lumber Company was organized at Sandpoint, Idaho that year by Weyerhaeuser and Edward Rutledge. Soon they owned the Clearwater Timber Company at Lewiston, Potlatch Lumber Company at Potlatch, Bonners Ferry Lumber Company, at Bonners Ferry and Rutledge Timber Company at Couer d'Alene. Wm Deary became the first general manager at Potlatch.
Most of the State Land Board and Governor Steunenberg left office in January of 1900. In their hands were timber rights to thousands of acres of timber in Oregon and Washington when he set his sights on Idaho. Soon he had rights on 40,000 acres of land on the Clearwater River and a new syndicate was formed which included ex-Governor Steunenberg. Land grabbing began. Timber fraud became so blatant by 1901 that all timber claims and financing was to be reviewed and approved by the General Land office and Secretary of the Interior. At the urging of several U.S. Congressmen these transgressions were forgotten. When the smoke cleared, a new lumber company was incorporated by the syndicate at Boise, called the Barber Lumber Company. They bought three homesteads in 1903, just east of the townsite for their plants. James Barber was elected president and ex-Governor Steunenberg was made general agent they had timber rights on 25,000 acres on Grimes and Mores Creeks - soon this increased to 61,000 acres.
They expected to float logs down Mores Creek to the sawmill but it wasn't successful. The mill at Barber shut down. Barber lumber had timber rights on the Boise River drainage, so logs were floated down the Boise River to the mill. In 1907 they ran out of saw logs, so the mill was shut down indefinitely. Barber Lumber needed money to build a railroad to their timber stands, so Weyerhaeuser and Association bought one-third control of Barber Lumber. With new money, the Intermountain Railway Company was organized in 1907. It was to haul logs from timber claims via Grimes Creek and Mores Creek to the Barber mill.
Boise Lumber Company had timber rights on Grimes Creek but was almost destitute. They joined forces with Barber Lumber Company and the new name was Boise Payette Lumber Company. The first step in this merger was to buy the Intermountain Railroad Company. Problems plagued the company from the start. There were problems with rail equipment, mountain weather, pine bark beetles and wrecks. Mining companies claimed mineral rights on 1,000 acres of Barber Mill timber and when this dispute was resolved it was in favor of the mining companies.
In 1915 the Barber Mill sawed only a tenth of it’s capacity. The railroad began hauling passengers, freight and livestock. A new mill manager increased the log supply to the mill. When World War I came along, profits increased, but the Depression of the 1930s took its toll and lumber company losses were over $1 million.
The Intermountain Railroad was abandoned in 1935 and the Barber Mill closed. Mill employees were transferred to the Emmett mill operations.
Emmett became home of the Payette Lumber and Manufacturing Company in December of 1902. The company wanted to float logs down the Payette River as other sawmills had done in the 1880s, when the Moss Brothers floated their railroad ties to Payette. A. Rossi & Co., with a sawmill at Washoe, ran logs from his holdings on the South Fork of the Payette from 1885 to 1890.
The Payette Lumber Company mill at Emmett decided to give the river a try. Their timber rights were on the North Fork of the Payette River. The first log run ended in disaster as only half of the logs made it through the treacherous rapids. Four men were killed in this attempt.
A new manager decided to have a survey made for a railroad to run from Emmett to McCall via Smiths Ferry and Cascade. Numerous legal battles ensued as several railroads fought for the right to haul logs. Finally, in 1911, the Idaho Northern Railroad began construction - reaching Cascade in 1913 and McCall in 1914.
The Boise Payette Lumber Company was created by a merger with the Payette Lumber and Barber Lumber Company of Boise in 1913. C. A. Barton, the new manager, developed a large system of retail lumber yards in Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming and Colorado. They instigated a system of replanting trees to replace the ones harvested. They bought rough lumber from small mills and turned out surface lumber for consumers.
W. H. Dewey, the empire builder, needed mining supplies at his mines in the Silver City district and lumber supplies to build houses at Silver City. He built the Boise, Nampa and Owyhee Railroad in 1897 which ran from the Emmett mill to Nampa and then to Murphy. Later it was incorporated into the Idaho Northern Railroad.
The Pacific and Idaho Northern Railroad, dubbed the PIN, ran from Weiser to New Meadows along the Weiser River. Various railroads vied for control and ownership ending up with the Oregon Short Line (Union Pacific). It hauled logs to the Boise Payette Lumber mill at Emmett. Many trains were 100 cars long. Later years produced more carloads of finished lumber than logs on the rails. These were set out at Weiser for pickup by main line Union Pacific trains.
Idaho's lumbermen built 82 railroads for moving their logs to sawmills. It all started in 1902 by the Potlatch Lumber Company who hauled logs from Montana and Washington into Idaho by rail.
As the timber supply has been diminished, mills have closed and rails abandoned. No more can you hear the clikety-clack of a passing train or the whistle of locomotives echoing off the hillsides or canyons. From the roadbeds the rails have disappeared and the ties have ended up as landscaping timber. Bikes and hikers have trails that can be traveled one for miles. An era of easy timber harvest has ended and gone are the railroads of the lumber giants.