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Member Profile: The House That Frederick Built- The Story of Weyerhaeuser |
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Written On: March/April 2004 |
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Written By: By Scott Carlson |
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A boy named Frederick traveled to America in 1852 with little more than the clothes on his back and absolutely no money in his pocket. He left Germany and poverty behind to find what millions of other immigrants were searching for – a better life in a fairly new country.
Today, the empire Frederick Weyerhaeuser launched is the Weyerhaeuser Company, ranked in Fortune’s top 100 businesses with 7.3 million acres of forestlands in the United States alone and over 57,000 workers in 18 countries around the world. It is not only the Association of Washington Business’ (AWB) oldest member, but is based right here in Washington.
The story of Weyerhaeuser is the story of a family committed to providing jobs, renewing its forests and sustaining a supply of wood products for generations to come.
Weyerhaeuser Started as a Day Laborer
The story starts with Frederick. Along the way, five of his descendents would rise to head the company for nearly three-quarters of its 104 years in business.
After his arrival, he worked as a day laborer in Pennsylvania, where he met and married Elisabeth Bladel. The young couple moved to Rock Island, IL. Frederick took odd jobs to support his family, but he was a hard worker and advanced rapidly.
“The secret lay simply in my will to work,” he said in one of his few interviews. “I never watched the clock and never stopped before I had finished what I was working on.”
He started his career in the lumber industry as a sawmill manager in Rock Island. Using money he saved, Frederick began purchasing timberland in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.
He moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1891, and became friends with his neighbor, James J. Hill, who operated the Northern Pacific Railroad (NP). The NP was a land grant railroad and Hill was granted alternating sections of federal land for 10 miles each side of the railroad right-of-way.
Weyerhaeuser Buys NP Forest
Since railroads were expensive to build, but necessary in order to settle the West, Congress allowed Hill to acquire additional public forests and coal reserves inexpensively. In turn, Hill sold more than three million acres to Weyerhaeuser to finance the railroad. Thus Frederick Weyerhaeuser acquired one of the richest timber areas on earth.
After the purchase, Weyerhaeuser stated: “This is not for us, nor for our children – but for our grandchildren.” His vision was not the traditional “cut and run” philosophy of the day, but a long-term commitment to successive crops of trees.
Weyerhaeuser needed financial backing for the purchase. In 1900, with the backing of 11 investors and only three employees, he started his new firm. Frederick wanted to name the new company the Universal Timber Company, but his partners voted to name it in his honor; it was to be known as the Weyerhaeuser Company.
Weyerhaeuser Company Born
In the beginning, neither Weyerhaeuser nor his investors lived in the Pacific Northwest. The company operated out of two rented rooms across from the Northern Pacific Railroads, because the railroad had the only maps of the land Weyerhaeuser purchased from them.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Weyerhaeuser chose George S. Long to be the first general manager – a position he would hold for 30 years.
“The job that confronted me was not a lumberman’s but a diplomat’s,” Long said.
Long was also viewed by many in the industry as “ahead of his time,” because he promoted the idea of sustainable forestry. He even sponsored a 1904 study to look at the potential of growing timber as a crop.
“Timber is a natural resource that can be renewed,” Long said. “The company’s greatest asset is the forest soil and the reproductive power of trees.”
Later, that same philosophy would permeate the forest products industry and lead Weyerhaeuser, in 1941, to establish the nation’s first tree farm on the Clements tract near Montesano.
Yacolt Burn Put Weyerhaeuser in Logging Business
As America expanded westward, the company focused on acquiring more forestland. Standing timber was sold to manufacturers to build the new cities of the recently-tamed West. Weyerhaeuser leaders did all they could to stay out of the logging business, but that all changed with the mammoth 1902 Yacolt Fire. That burn, the largest in Washington history, covered 239,000 acres between the Columbia River Gorge and Mount Adams. Weyerhaeuser sent hundreds of loggers to salvage wood.
As a result of that devastating blaze, Weyerhaeuser spearheaded the inception of the forest fire protection movement, and by 1908, the Washington Fire Protection Association (WFPA) had 75 forest fire patrolmen working in Northwest forests and had extinguished 350 fires. (Later, the WFPA became the Washington Forest Protection Association).
After becoming a member of the Employers’ Association of Washington (the forerunner of the Association of Washington Business) in 1913, business at Weyerhaeuser was spurred by the onset of World War I. Warplanes used for reconnaissance and air-to-air combat were built from Pacific Northwest spruce. Lumber from the company was also used to build wooden ships and barracks for troops. Military demands for lumber were exorbitant, so the Army exchanged weapons for axes and sent soldiers to work as lumberjacks to step up production in Weyerhaeuser’s forests.
World War II Brings Many Changes to Weyerhaeuser
On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese bombers nearly wiped out the Pacific Fleet stationed at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor. The very next day, the U.S. declared war on Japan and entered a long, costly campaign.
As men entered military service by the hundreds of thousands, women occupied a large number of positions in Weyerhaeuser’s workforce. They helped the company again meet military demands for lumber.
The company further aided the war effort after Weyerhaeuser Steamship Company vessels were ordered into federal service. Two ships were lost when they were torpedoed and sunk.
During and after the war, the timber company went through major changes. The power chainsaw proved more efficient than the hand-operated whipsaw. Trucks, not trains, began hauling raw timber from the forests of America. And, in 1945, the company began offering a pension plan for full-time salaried employees.
In the 1950s, Weyerhaeuser began diversifying their product line. The company opened three kraft-pulp mills for production of grocery sacks and multi-wall sacks for pet food, lawn and garden seed; a bleached paperboard mill; plywood and ply-veneer plants; and particleboard, containerboard, hardboard and wood-fiber mills. These products are now a major driver in the company’s success.
George Weyerhaeuser Took Over in 1966
In 1966, George H. Weyerhaeuser, Frederick’s great grandson, started his reign as the company’s longest-serving chief executive officer. Under his leadership, he saw to it that high-yield forestry became the company’s guiding principle in forest management. He also introduced the company to the newsprint business, thus expanding the empire much further.
Then, in May 1980, Mount St. Helens awoke with a terrific blast, leveling miles of forest. The company launched its enormous salvage effort and reforestation campaign. Three years later, 1,000 workers had rescued enough timber to build 85,000 homes and more than 18.4 million seedlings from Weyerhaeuser nurseries had been replanted. The seedlings will be ready for harvest in 2020.
Skeptics didn’t believe the blast zone of the volcano could be replanted. Weyerhaeuser planting crews had to dig through more than a foot of ash to reach the fertile Cascade soil below.
Environmental Audits Launched
In the 1990s, the company opened its “Office of the Environment” and began conducting environmental audits on all of its operations, including annual environmental reports, and made them available to the public.
“We heard that people want us to care for the entire forest, not just the trees,” said Weyerhaeuser’s former president Jack Creighton. “They want us to protect other resources, including water quality, fish and wildlife habitat.”
Today, Weyerhaeuser’s CEO is Steve Rogel, who initiated Weyerhaeuser’s “Road Map to Success” and guided the company through a series of major acquisitions. Among these acquisitions was Willamette Industries, where Rogel served as CEO immediately before heading Weyerhaeuser.
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