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At Remember The Roxy, OrangeTV headlines this 1936 postcard image as “Lovely Lumber Mill, Lake Cd’A, 1936. It appears to me that this mill once stood at the current site of the Coeur d’Alene Resort golf course. Dunno if it was called the Rutledge Mill then. Eventually, Hagadone bought the old Rutledge Mill and constructed his golf course and floating green. A piece of the Rutledge Mill machinery now sits in the paid parking lot north of the North Idaho Museum on Northwest Boulevard.
Question: Do any of you have a relative that once worked in the old Rutledge Mill?
D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.
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hmoffsuite on March 18 at 3:11 p.m.
A little side story to the Rutliedge Mill. After Potlatch shut down the mill, the property was clearly seen as being valuable. Many a developer approached Potlatch to buy it from them but they wouldn’t sell it. The capital gains taxes would have killed them. So, Mr. Hagadone, being the astute business man that he is, went and bought tens of thousands of acres of trees out in the boondocks somewhere. He then approached Potlatch with the idea of a tax free exchange of assets. His trees for their old mill. They acted on his idea and that is how it came about. Genius, imo.
GaryIngram on March 18 at 5:17 p.m.
Well, I don’t have any relatives that once worked in the old Rutledge mill, but I’ll do ya one better. I worked at one time or another in all of them, sort of. I sold chemicals and water treatment consulting services for over 30 years to area mills for their steam plants. Early on it was for boilers that provided steam to drive the engines that powered the machinery. I remember the closing of the last old line drive mill In Idaho at Winchester. Later it was mostly treatment for steam systems for lumber dry kilns as plants became powered by electricity.
I had to visit each mill once a month, year around and perform tests to ensure the water treatment was protecting the systems. I hate to be a name dropper, (not really) but I became very familiar with operations at CDA Stud, the old Pat Flamia mill that sat on the hill next to where 95 crosses the river, DeArmond Joyner next to the NIC, Post Falls Lumber and its later owners, Georgia Pacific & Louisiana Pacific, Northwest Timber where Riverstone is now developing, Idaho Veneer, the Atlas Mill, and most all the mills north in Sandpoint and Moyie Springs and into western Montana.
Anyway, local saw milling and I retired about the same time.
mia on March 18 at 10:13 p.m.
My dad and brother were Diamond Intl (now Mill Town) men, but we had family friends who worked at Potlatch. The mills were one of the big employers of the day!