EL DORADO COUNTY, Calif. (October 15, 2023) – Timber was a valuable commodity in the european settlement of california as early as 1847. James Marshall, the discovered of gold a year later, first traveled up the south fork of the american river searching for a place to build a sawmill where lumber could be cut for the building boom. John Sutter was anticipating for the Sacramento valley, however the rush to find gold completely overwhelmed the unfinished sawmill and Coloma as well as Sutter’s plans. But the demand for vast quantities of lumber quickly created another kind of gold, Green Gold.
During the gold rush people came pouring into the region and with them the demand for wood. Wood for shoring up mines wood for building houses and stores wood for fuel to power steam engines and wood to build long toms and water flumes. experienced lumbermen and sawers who came to california to find gold found they could put their skills to use by supplying lumber from the county’s vast forests. Sawmills sprang up all over some lasted and others were gone as soon as the gold played out in a particular area.
![Grizzly Flat [ca. 1851-1852]](https://www.inedc.com/23/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GrizzlyFlats-1851-1852-120x86.webp)
An example of entrepreneurial sawmill owners were the Blair brothers. John, the oldest came to el dorado county shortly after the family migrated from Scotland in 1850. He began with 320 acres east of Placerville along the immigrant road to Carson valley and his three brothers soon joined him. The Blair brothers operated the Sportsman Hall. One of the most important and popular stops for stagecoaches, freight wagons, travelers, and later the pony express. However the Blair brothers diversified their interest by going into the lumber business. The original steam powered Blair’s mill could cut eight to ten thousand feet of lumber per day. Logging wagons hauled by huge ox teams were used to move the cut lumber to the mill.
Because of problems transporting logs to the mill they found it was easier to move the mill closer to the logging. Logs could be skidded downhill, or pulled uphill more efficiently using steam donkeys. An area around a mill would be logged off in about 10 years and then another mill site would be established. Members of the Blair family operated a series of mills stretching along the length of the ridge between Camino and Pacific House from 1870 to 1958.
Solving the transportation problem was the biggest hurdle for large lumber companies. Two such companies decided to invest in railroads by laying narrow gauge track. And logging areas and then track to transport the log lumber to the Placerville Branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad. The lumber was shipped to Sacramento and then distributed to markets all over the country.
In 1889 the American River Land and Lumber Company constructed a log chute down Slab Creek on the north face of the South Fork of the American River to carry logs from the rich timber stands in the georgetown divide. The company was taken over by El Dorado Lumber Company in 1900. They built a mill and Pino Grand on the north side of the American River and used the cable suspended over the American River to move cut lumber on rail cars to the drying yards in Camino.
The other major lumber company was the Oakland-based California Door Company which purchased thirty 800 acres in the southeast part of the county. A mill was built in Caldor, now part of the El Dorado National Forest and lumber was hauled to Diamond Springs by narrow gauge railroad where it was loaded onto the Southern Pacific Railroad. After the Caldor mill burned in 1923 a new electric powered mill was built in Diamond Springs which was in business until the mid 1960s when the El Dorado National Forest was created in 1910.
Its purpose was to care for the resources in the forest including grazing right, and timber. Timber surveys were conducted and logging permits issued. Increasing concerns about over harvesting and impacts to other natural resources in the forest has brought about a change in attitude to the availability of this resource. The Forest Service and logging companies are now stewards of the forest and plant more trees than they cut.
However, due to increased cost more regulations and less demand for wood many sawmills have closed other lumber companies have come and gone. A new mill was constructed in Latrobe for the Wetzel Oviatt Lumber Company in 1972. Moving operations from their old mill at Omo Ranch. Wetzel Oviatt ceased operations in 2003.
The Camino mill owned by Michigan California Lumber Company until 1994 continued operations under the ownership Sierra Pacific Industries until 2009.
Logging still occurs in El Dorado County but on a much smaller scale. In the days of the gold rush, and for the next 75 years, there is no apparent concern about the impact of clear-cutting acres of trees.
Early photos of Placerville show no trees. They were cut down and used to build the town used as the cheapest and easiest fuel for machinery for steam power and for keeping warm.
125 years ago lumber companies saw el dorado county’s vast forests as commercial products to be exploited. Today the sight and sound of an old narrow gauge railroad with steam-powered locomotive belching out smoke and hauling car loads of logs reminds us of days long gone.
Video from the El Dorado County Historical Museum.
“My grandfather (Glen Fogleman) was the finance guy for the Calif Door Co. He took me to Caldor and Diamond Springs many times to watch the operations. He is the one who purchased the Shea locos from the factory in Lima, OH. With help from the engineer, I drove Shea #4. I also watched the electric mill in operation sawing logs. It brings back memories.”
– Joel Laurence [10-22]
My father ran crane at Caldor mill,state box, and Mich-cal. He set all the saw boilers, under the watchful eye of my grandfather Slim Lloyd. Shanley (Slim) Lloyd was the Millwright building Mich-cal mill. My father Jay Wunschel built the mill pond and stayed and decked logs for the mill and married Slim’s daughter Ethel May Loyd [Ethel Wunschel] is still here today at the age of 84.
– John C Wunschel Jr [Feb. 2-23]
![Grizzly Flat [ca. 1851-1852]](https://www.inedc.com/23/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GrizzlyFlats-1851-1852-350x250.webp)
