The most commented post on this site is about the former town of Hilt located in Siskiyou County near the Oregon border. While Hilt is far removed from the Lassen region, it has a unique relationship to the area. This was Fruit Growers Supply Company’s first sawmill, which proved successful. With the expansion of the citrus industry, created the need for an additional lumber to manufacture box shook, the wooden components to make a wooden box, which was the standard container. In 1919, Fruit Growers established a second mill in Susanville and in 1944 the company purchased Red River Lumber Company’s mill at Westwood.

The origins of Hilt started in 1855, when John Hilt began mining along Cottonwood Creek, just south of the Oregon border. In 1878, he purchased his son-in-law’s sawmill. In 1887 when the railroad was built through there, Hilt did not take advantage of it and  continued with a small time operation. That changed in 1901 when he sold out to some Grants Pass, Oregon businessmen who formed the Hilt Sugar Pine Company. That was short lived. It was acquired in 1907 by Shasta County investors who formed the Northern California Lumber Company. From day one they had financial problems.

Enter Fruit Growers. Fruit Growers reluctantly lent the lumber company $100,000, however, they were not impressed with its operation. Their logging operations deemed primitive, as they still used oxen with no intent to convert to modern railroad logging. It was stipulated that a portion of the cash advance was to be used to construct four miles of logging railroad. Progress, was slow but sure, with the construction of a box factory, but again needed additional money. By 1910, the  day of reckoning was at hand, whether Fruit Growers should cut their losses or take over the troubled lumber company. After careful consideration, Fruit Growers went ahead and acquired Hilt and entered into the lumber industry. They would operate the Hilt mill for sixty-one years.

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Not all logging camps were created equal. Each lumber company had its own policy—some allowed families to stay in logging camps. Both Fruit Growers Supply Company and Lassen Lumber & Box Company allowed families in their respective logging camps.

What was referred to as “family row” at Camp 10 consisted of about ten cabins. As Leonard Uhl who, with his wife Irene and son Richard, lived there in 1943 recalled: “The family cabins were quite a bit larger than the single men’s cabins, and had two rooms. They were equipped with a wood cook stove, a kitchen table, chairs, double bed and a screen and gunny sack evaporation cooler.”  The cooler served as a primitive refrigerator. The families cooked their own meals. Except for rare occasions, only employees were allowed to eat in the cookhouse. Employees with families had the choice of eating at home or at the cookhouse.

Since the families were not allowed to eat the in cookhouse, Fruit Growers made accommodations for them to obtain groceries and such. As Marilyn Denton Holmes recalls from her childhood at Camp 10 during the 1930s; “There was no store at Camp, but a commissary where we could get our mail and supplies that a daily Company owned bus, would bring back to Camp. My Mother would send a list with the driver and he would do the shopping and bring the order back to Camp.”

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The cookhouse operations at logging camps were an expensive undertaking resulting in substantial losses for the lumber company.  However, the food served in the logging camps played a pivotal role.  Poorly fed loggers would move to a different logging company, and thereby impact the former company’s production.

In 1948, Fruit Growers Supply Company experimented at its Camp Harvey location (some twenty miles east of Poison Lake) by raising the price of a meal to one dollar.  Complaints were loud and long.  But now, instead of losing thirty-six cents per meal, they now lost only eight cents.  The result was substantial and at the end of the year, Fruit Growers’ operating losses for the cookhouses at Camps Harvey and the newly opened Camp Stanford was $63,500.

On May 2, 1949, Camps Harvey and Stanford opened for another season. In an effort to further reduce the cookhouse expenses, Fruit Growers leased them along with the commissaries, to H.S. Anderson Company for one dollar.  Fruit Growers thought perhaps an outside company could handle the meals more efficiently.  They would never find out the answer.

Just three weeks into the logging season all operations on the Harvey line shut down.  The cookhouse crews, represented by Local 768 of the Bartenders and Culinary Workers Union, walked off the job in a wage and hour dispute with H.S. Anderson Company.  As the weeks passed with no end of the strike in sight, Fruit Growers closed down Camp Harvey and Stanford permanently, as well as its Harvey railroad logging line.

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