Sixteen Views of California Logging Operations around 1900
These photographs are from the Clare Roy Sprague Collection, part of the Alfred 'Cap' Collier Collection at the Shaw Historical Library. The views include mills at Albion, Casper, and Mendocino in California.
Mr. Sprague began his career as a saw filer at the age of twenty in Albion, Mendocino County, California, in 1900. The Albion Lumber Company Mill was operated by Standish and Hickey at that time. Mr. Sprague was then associated with the Verdi Lumber Company in Verdi, Nevada. During his fifteen years with that company he served as a filer and factory superintendent. He then became planing mill foreman for Swayne Lumber Company in Oroville, California.
Around 1927, Mr. Sprague arrived in Oregon where he ran a planing mill in Glendale and was a saw filer for the White Cedar Mill of Coos Bay for sixteen years. The Company sold out to Coos Bay Lumber Company, and the latter was eventually absorbed by Georgia Pacific.