Then and Now: McGoldrick Lumber
Long before the south side of Gonzaga University’s campus became home of the McCarthey Athletic Center, a soccer field, the law school building and baseball field complex, it was the site of McGoldrick Lumber for more than 40 years in the first half of the 20th century.
Section:Then & Now
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Spokane Public Library
| Northwest Room
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Jesse Tinsley
| The Spokesman-Review
Then and Now: McGoldrick Lumber
Long before the south side of Gonzaga University’s campus became home of the McCarthey Athletic Center, a soccer field, the law school building and baseball field complex, it was the site of McGoldrick Lumber for more than 40 years in the first half of the 20th century.
James P. McGoldrick, born in 1859, started his timber business in Minnesota. After seeing that most of the lumber he sold came from the Northwest, he moved to Spokane in 1906 and took over the small A.M. Fox Lumber Co., just south of Gonzaga College, east of downtown Spokane. It sat on land leased from the Jesuits who had established a college there.
The McGoldrick Lumber Co. milled logs shipped by train from Idaho, dried the lumber outdoors and ran a retail lumber business. The mill became one of Spokane’s largest employers.
A son, Milton, took over the mill and other businesses when his father, called J.P., died in 1939. The company’s board of trustees paid tribute to their founder, saying he perfectly combined “the qualities of business judgement, enthusiasm, love of hard work and love of his fellow man.”
The sprawling complex had suffered severe fires in 1924 and 1929, but on a hot August day in 1945, gusty winds fanned flames that leveled most of the plant before firefighters could make a stand. Although 175 Navy sailors who were training at Gonzaga pitched in to stop it, the losses were estimated at $350,000.
Milton and his son, James II, planned to rebuild, but the drawn-out world war made new equipment hard to find and timber prices were dropping, so the McGoldricks decided to shut down after 41 years of operation. The equipment and retail business was sold to E.C. Olson Lumber of Priest River. Timber lands were sold to the Ohio Match Co. Milton died in 1947 at age 54.
James II, born in 1916, had assumed he would be part of the lumber business, but he started Northwest Electronics, a manufacturer and distributor, and he became a lifelong airplane pilot and aviation promoter. He served on many corporate and civic boards, including the Chamber of Commerce, Expo ’74 and Spokane International Airport. He wrote history books about Spokane aviation and the family lumber business, “The McGoldrick Lumber Company Story.” He died in 2012.