Laytonville sawmills of the '50s

We have had a small discussion about a sawmill located north-west of the new Laytonville high school. Ross Sherburn identified it as the Sulphur Creek Lumber Company. I remember the mill operating before the '55 flood, but I believe that the '55 flood either took it out or damaged it heavily. According to Ross' mill history book, the mill closed in '56. Maybe they rebuilt and struggled to survive after the flood but failed. The times were tough for sawmills back then, especially mills that had problems, and there is no problem like a flood. Most of the sawmills were built near creeks or water because they needed water for their log ponds. A lot of sawmills were lost in the floods because of that fact.

 Trying to find the name of this mill caused me to wonder about other mills that were scattered about the valley. There were three other mills around the lake. There was the Jack Crawford mill, the Sherburn-Ford mill owned by Ross' dad, Shine Sherburn, and Frank ford. There was the Lakeside Lumber Company, that was built right on the lake. They even used the natural lake as a log pond. I'm not sure how they handled all the flooding. I think that they were high enough that the mills weren't bothered that much, but I really don't know.

 On out the Branscomb road, four or five miles, was the Ben Mast Lumber Company. The mill got it's water from huge artesian springs on the property. The Mast mill was larger than most mills around the valley. They cut a lot of redwood lumber. He was able to make his fortune by building the only plainer mill in the valley. Not only did he plain his own lumber, most of the mills in the valley would send their lumber through his mill to have it surfaced. The Mast plainer mill also produced redwood siding lumber. It was a very modern  mill by 1950's standards. Ben Mast owned everything in his lumber operation from the saws that cut the timber to the logging equipment, the trucks that took the logs to the mill, the mill, the plainer, to the trucks that hauled most of the lumber to San Francisco.

South of Laytonville, on Davidson Lane(?), was the PH&E lumber company. I don't remember much about it, but I do remember the trucks that they used. The trucks were GMCs with Detroit Diesel engines in them. They sounded different than any other trucks that I had heard. I remember the lope of the idling engines. They would rev up, then fall back against the engine speed governor. Then they would rev up again. They would idle like someone was goosing the throttle every few seconds. They said that you didn't dare let them run out of fuel, because it you did, the speed governor would lock wide open and the engine would blow-up. Wow, pretty dramatic!

At the north end of the valley, about three miles south of Black Oak Ranch was the Ben L. Branscomb Lumber company. The mill was owned by my uncle Ben. I remember a lot about that mill. The mill was powered by Caterpiller engines. The head-rig engine was the largest V-8 engine that I ever saw. Ben had a log pond. He fed the pond off the log deck with a Skagit triple drum cable loader. The head rig was two large over and under circular saws with insert saw bits. He had an adjustable gang saw edger, a trim saw and a burner for the trimmings. He had his lumber surfaced at the Mast mill.

I can't remember the name of the mill across the street, east of Ben's mill, I believe that there was two of them. I know that they had a pond, because my cousin Roy and I used to catch bull frogs out of the pond after the mills closed.

The mill that I would particularly like the name of was a mill at the very south end of Long Valley on the west side of the highway. It was in a small canyon right beside the 101 highway. I used to know the name of it, but it slipped my mind. I didn't worry about it too much because I thought that someday it would jog back into my head.... But alas and alack... it didn't.

Maybe Ross knows, he has that book. It was before Robin's time, so she probably didn't know about it. It was about a half mile past Red Buck. I had a friend who's father, Cotton Stein, was the bookkeeper there. My friend's name was Royce Stein.

Anybody know of other mills?