The Minnesota Historical Society is a wonderful institution that is also the home to the T.B. Walker papers and archives of the Red River Lumber Company. On my last visit I ordered over 700 pages of documents. There are a lot of tidbits that unfortunately, I could not include in the Red River series. To do so, would have made for some awkward reading.
The T.B. Walker papers contains tremendous amount of correspondence between the family members. In T.B.’s correspondence there is a sense of frustration as he found himself in a Catch-22 situation. After all, the California operation was for his sons to operate on their own. While he provided his thoughts and opinions, most went largely ignored. In 1916, he lamented that mammoth mill at Westwood was a colossal mistake. It was his intention that Red River build several small mills throughout their vast timber holdings of Northern California.
Stay tuned for more.
Profound thought here. I probably never would have been born if the big mill had never been built. My mother’s family came from Idaho and my father’s family from Georgia. Both families came to Westwood because of the employment opportunities.