One of the challenges that Great Western Power Company encountered building the dam that created Lake Almanor was the removal of pine timber. They estimated between Almanor and other other reservoir site of Butt Valley that there was 200 million board feet of timber. In 1911, Great Western contacted the Red River Lumber Company who at that time still had not decided where they would construct its first mill. In July 1913, after much wrangling the two reached an agreement. Great Western would pay RedRiver one dollar per thousand board feet of pine timber removed—approximately $200,000. Red River estimated the cost at $500,000.
With the agreement, and time being of the essence as the dam would be complete and the flooding to create Lake Almanor would begin by the spring of 1914. That fall Red River put its loggers at a frantic pace to fall some 80 million board feet of timber, which would be subjected to initial flooding.
In the spring of 1914, Red River using a gasoline launch boat, would float the timber to the east side of the newly created lake by Big Springs. From there the logs were reloaded onto railroad cars and shipped to Westwood for milling. They would repeat a similar procedure in 1924 at Butt Valley and again in 1926 when Lake Almanor was enlarged.