SANDY’S HERITAGE
After more than 100 years of logging and sawmills in the Sandy area, we have to
say that they are our “heritage.”
The early Oregon Trail and Barlow Road emigrants were seeking the lush
Willamette Valley farm land. When that land had all been taken, they acquired land in
the outer areas such as Sandy: land that was blessed with a heavy crop of mature
timber. Settlers then would likely become involved in logging and sawmill work that
would support their communities.
In the Sandy area there was a saying: “There’s a sawmill behind every stump”
which was of course an exaggeration, but there were many sawmills.
The first sawmill we know of in the Sandy area was the Forrester sawmill on Deep
Creek. Thomas Forrester had arrived in Oregon City with the heavy sawmill machinery
around 1840, having traveled by sailing-ship on the long and hazardous journey around
Cape Horn. It wasn’t until the 1870s when the railroads came to California and the
1880s when they came to Oregon that the heavy machinery could be shipped by rail.
Forrester settled east of Oregon City where he bought property near Foster’s
settlement at Eagle Creek. His sawmill was located on the north side of Deep Creek
only about three miles from where the town of Sandy would evolve.
An early sawmill was built on nearby Cedar Creek by John Wewer in the 1870s. It
was run by water-power and had an “up and down” (rather than a circular) saw. When
sawmill equipment became available, almost all mills used steam-power. Some of the
earliest mills were owned by Foster and Smith, the Moignettes, Henry Wewer, Bob
Wilson, and the Hillyard Bros. Some of the Sandy area sawmill owners in the early
1900s were Victor Johanson, Sandy Fir Lumber Co., Jonsrud Bros., Palmer (Boring),
John Nelson, and Bartsch Bros. Some of the mills in the 1920s and 1930s were owned
by Sandy Lumber Co. of Brightwood, John Valberg, Fred Koennecke, Meinig & Gilbert
Jonsrud, Alt Bros., Joe Yoerger, Jonsrud-Gunderson, Charley Krebs, Cameron &
Hough, Bruns and McIntyre, Alf Bell, Otto Krebs, Bruns-Jonsrud, and Chris Mensinger.
In later years after World War II, some owners were Bill Dyal, Murray & Scales,
Bill Winters, Walter Koch Jr., Frank & Bill Bittner, Mountain-View Lumber Co., Milt Fox,
Sr., Alvin Eri, John Harris, Ed Buswell, Orval Fleshman, Marvin Light, Merle Martin, Jr.
& Russell Sheerman, Summit Lumber Co., Cheney Lumber Co., Vic Bodley, and so
many others.
The first large mill in Sandy was the Sandy Fir Lumber Co. In 1913 it was owned by
W.A. Proctor, John Straus, Martin Lennartz and Ezekial Beers. It was located less than
a mile south of Sandy. It was a successful mill but closed when the timber supply gave
out.
The largest mill ever in the City of Sandy was the Walter Koch Lumber Co. that ran
almost steadily from 1943 until about 1973. It was located where the Mt. Hood Industrial
Park is now situated and employed and about 200 workers in the mill and the logging
crew. Their payroll kept the Sandy area humming for about 30 years!
The largest mill in the “Sandy area” (the same area as the present Oregon Trail
Consolidated School District) was the Vanport mill in Boring. It was started by Joe
Yoerger, and partners John Hillyard and Jimmy Moore. Joe had discovered the
manufacture of a new type of lumber mill that utilized cutter heads rather than saws. It
revolutionized the production of lumber. In one continuous operation, the log was first
barked and then went through a chipper that squared the log before going through a
gang-saw that cut it into individual rough boards that then went through a planer to be
smooth-surfaced. The ground bark was sold to tree nurseries and the chips to paper
mills. This utilized small-diameter logs that normally were left to rot in the woods.
In about 1967, Adolph Hertrich, originally from Germany, joined the Vanport firm.
With a degree in Forestry from the University of Michigan and with extensive experience
in the forests of the Mt. Hood foothills, he had knowledge of the availability of timber.
Vanport could export the larger quality logs and manufacture the small ones. This
worked well until the early 1970s when the U.S. prohibited the export of logs but not
lumber.
To offset this problem, Hertrich traveled to Japan and was able to get the Japanese
to accept American lumber for their home-building, but it had to be cut to Japanese
standards and measurements for their post and beam style of construction. By
remodeling the mill again and manufacturing to Japanese standards, Vanport ran two
shifts a day for most of the next 25 years selling this lumber to Japan.
Vanport employed 230 workers at peak times and about 180 at slower times and
was the largest mill in the Sandy area. Because of a lack of timber in 1999, the Vanport
mill in Boring closed. Hertrich bought out his three partners who retired and have since
died. However, the Vanport Corporation continued under Hertrich family management
as International Lumber Brokers doing business in places around the world that would
astound us!
Adolf Hertrich retired in 2011 and remains active in the community, including in
supporting the museum and in being a judge in the first Sandy Invitational Chainsaw
Carving Competition last August.
The above-mentioned sawmills were only part of the total number in this area. We
hope that readers will remember others and will share that information with the Sandy
Historical Society’s Museum.
