Awhile back I wrote about Frona Colburn’s’ 1922 book The Kingship of Mount Lassen. As promised from her book, is her account of Westwood.
”Like a trip on the magic carpet is the transformation wrought at Westwood, a model town in Plumas County, set in the heart of a virgin pine forest skirting the southern base of Lassen Peak. All about one clean, sweet smell of newly cut pines, and the whole atmosphere is one of humming activity among an intelligent and contented populace. The five thousand inhabitants live in modern homes in a natural forest park. An eye for the beautiful has left the big white pines standing wherever possible, even along the graded streets, and the approach roadways leading into and out of town.
“It was the author’s good fortune to arrive at Westwood at noon, hot, thirsty and covered with volcanic dust. Imagine the surprise and joy of finding an up-to-the-minute department store—large, airy and cool—where a delicious crushed pineapple ice cream soda all but saved one’s life. And the price, fifteen cents! This drink was served with all the daintiness of a metropolitan soda fountain, by a chap in white coat and apron spotlessly clean, and with manners to correspond.
Westwood has just ‘growed up’ in the heart of the woods, sixty miles from Nowhere, and is the last word in a logging camp. What gave it impetus? The constructive imagination of its founders.
“It is the pride and glory of the Walker family to have a nearly a perfect plant as it is possible to create and this desire includes evrything connected with the industry of lumbering. The whole atmosphere of Westwood is one of work. No loafers are permitted to stay long enough to breed dissensions. Every person bears his or her share of the work to be done, consequently there are no paupers and no destitution. Nor is there a shack in the town.
”Westwood baseball teams are not only natty in appearance but they can and play ball. Like the neatly-uniformed band they are an inspiration to all the surrounding countryside. Westwood musicians are in demand wherever good music has an appreciative hearing. The men at the head of the Red River Lumber Company not only know how to live themselves, but are willing that others may share in benefits derived from an intelligent, constructive attitude toward a big problem—that of pioneering in and out-of-the-way neck of the woods. The situation at Westwood would have delighted the soul of Peter Lassen, who was something of a sawmill man himself, and had a true woodsman’s love of trees.
“The Red River Lumber Company gives the following as their attitude toward the industry:
”It is our hope, by forestry practice, to so conserve the trees spite of our cutting (the largest of its kind) the actual amount of timber will never grow less but will remain forever a permanent thing of beauty, a field of labor and a source of supply.”