The Past
Businesses
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Community Services
Entertainment
Ethnic Groups
Geography
Heritage Homes
Industries
~ Brickyard
~ Coal Mine
~ Creamery
~ Columbia
Flouring Mill
~ Poleyards
~ Sawmills
~ ~ A.R. Rogers Sawmill
~ ~ Riverside
Sawmill
~ ~ Logging
Practices
~ ~ River Drives
Organizations
People
Schools
Transportation
A.C. Smith of Okanagan
Landing and Norman McLeod of Armstrong established a sawmill on the Shuswap River in
1894. Every four years the mill changed its owners, and each brought new and
improved ways of production. In 1905, the A.R. Rogers Lumber Company of Minneapolis,
Minnesota purchased the Okanagan Sawmill from Mr. Hale.The mill had some timber limits
especially in the Mabel Lake area. Albert Johnston and Andy Faulkner were the two biggest
log contractors in this period.
The mill had a large barn on the corner of Old Vernon Road to keep their horses and their logging equipment. Mr. Bush looked after it. Much of the block by Hubert, Russell, George, and Sicamous Streets was owned by the mill. The mill also built numerous houses for the workers and managers. Four houses were constructed on Hubert Street. The managerial staff had three large houses built around the corner on Sicamous. Mr. Stevens, a manager, lived in the largest and most ornate on the south west corner of Sicamous and Cliff Streets. Next to it was his son-in-law's house (Mr. Prince). The third one, built for Mr. Lemke, was on the westside of Sicamous Street.
The logs were jackladdered up to the mill where they were scaled and sawn. After this process they went to the grading table. The slabs were then hauled to three lots at the corner of Sicamous and Hubert Streets. Later, the slabs were brought back to be burned in the six big boilers to generate power. The excess electricity generated was sold to the city; this helped in the electrification of the city. The residents who used the power were billed by the mill. The steam engine was next to the steam-powered dynamo which gave power to the city. Later, three more boilers were added and were run by the East Indians.
The lumber then went to the planer and lathe mills and, when finished, some was stored in a large shed that stretched along the east side of the Old Vernon Road. The rest was loaded onto two-wheeled carts which were pulled by a modified Model T Ford tractor that ran on wooden rails. Finally, it was stored in piles on both sides of the tracks and shipped by rail to parts of Canada and the U.S.
Between 1917 and 1919 the mill hired 250 Japanese workers because of the manpower shortage in the First World War. They left for work in a mill at Chase when they heard rumors of the mill closing down.
The mill finally closed in 1921 because of falling commodity prices and the easy timber had been removed.
Erik Swanson, Aaron Lockhart, Dawn Gerlib
ALF School 1989