.png)
John Sanford Taylor, Sr., was a subject in the 1903 compilation, “A Volume of Memoirs and Genealogy of Representative Citizens of The City of Seattle and County of King, Washington."The Preface proclaims: “That nation is the greatest which produces the greatest and most manly men and faithful women.” Yet, a quote from the 1913 Seattle Daily Times may be more revealing. It reads: “There is probably not a better known couple in Seattle than grandfather Taylor and his aged wife. They are ardent baseball fans, and it is said that only illness can keep them away from a league game in Seattle on any other day except Sunday, when they do not attend. They do not approve of Sunday baseball.”
Born a Scotsman and raised a Canadian under servitude, John Sanford Taylor, with his wife Jeanette, arrived in Seattle in 1889, just months prior to the devastating fire of June 6. Having come from 30 years in Michigan harvesting the great stands of white pine in Saginaw Valley, followed by 10 years as sawmill operator in Minnesota, Taylor and his sons, William, David and John Jr., were familiar with what it took to be lumbermen. They already knew of boomsticks, bucking logs, cheat sticks and widow-makers. The Taylors wasted no time.
Seattle real estate developer Guy Phinney had built what may have been the first sawmill on the west shore of Lake Washington in the early 1880s. The Lake Washington Mill Company was just to the south of the steamboat ferry terminal at Leschi Park, at the foot of Charles Street. In May of 1889 the Taylors purchased property in Burke’s Second Addition near the sawmill, and in June, acquired property in East Seattle, timberland just across the water on the northern end of Mercer Island.
The local demand for lumber was intense after the 1889 fire. The Taylor Mill Company was incorporated on June 19, 1889, with $6,000 of capital stock issued. The Taylors ambitiously began construction of a new planing mill on the upper bluff overlooking the original Phinney mill on the lake shore. A tramway was built to transport timber up to the 32nd & Charles Street planing operation plus men and tools back and forth.
The Taylors set up a logging camp at the Mercer Island property and another at Lake Sammamish, where a steam railway dumped logs right into the lake to be floated out Squak Slough into Lake Washington and then towed by scow in rafts across the lake to the mill. An 1895 Seattle Post-Intelligencer article boasts of Taylor’s Mill, “the latest improved machinery of the best makes, such as steam feed, live rolls, steam nigger and endless log haul-up, their capacity being 75,000 feet per day.” One can imagine the constant noise of the machinery, copious amounts of sawdust in the air, and the release of various substances into the lake.
The Taylors had made their home up on the bluff as well, in the soon to be comfortable neighborhood of Rainier Heights. On June 7, 1891, the “simple frame Gothic edifice of the Grace Methodist Episcopal church” opened at the corner of 30th Avenue South and King Street. Church trustee John S. Taylor, Sr. donated the lumber to construct the church as well as the pulpit furniture, chairs and pews from his logging camps.
The Taylor Mill Company prospered and the neighborhood was humming and buzzing right along until one day, in February 1898, The Seattle Daily Times ran the headline “A Slump in Real Estate.” The “Gigantic Landslide” of Taylor’s sawmill into the lake had been some time in the making, perhaps the three years since the completion of the Rainier Heights car line. While the planing mill still rested atop the bluff, the "extent of the whole earthly movement is about one mile long by four blocks east and west," with hundreds of acres moving downward to the lake, residences destroyed, and the sawmill engine room left afloat.
In 1899, the Taylors signed a 15-year lease with Sutherland Mill Company, manufacturers of lumber, shingles and lath, to take over the Charles Street operation. The mill on the bluff was moved to the lakeshore but after a succession of various owners, in 1911, the mill at the foot of Charles Street burned to the ground. The Taylors had moved on.
Charles Waters platted Rainier Beach in 1891. The Seattle & Rainier Beach Railway ended at a picnic grounds where travelers could take a boat further south to Renton. There was no road along the lake. C.K. Sturtevant and his wife Emily replatted the southern portion in 1907 as Sturtevant’s Rainier Beach Villa Tracts. The Taylors secured property from Sturtevant for the mill at the foot of Thayer Street (now 68th Street) and for their residences overlooking the lake and mill.
The 1903 Polk’s Seattle City Directory first listed Rainier Beach Lumber Company, with John Sanford Taylor, president and his sons placed in various positions. The Taylors had located the new mill on a small bit of land along the shores of Lake Washington, largely on piers out into the water at the base of a heavily forested canyon, now known as Deadhorse Canyon. Mort Taylor (John, Jr.’s son) recalled that machinery from the Charles Street mill was floated south on barges to the new mill.
A 1904-05 Sanborn Fire Insurance map illustrates the layout. Logs were brought from the lake into the sawmill headed toward the double circular saw. A planer mill, elevated platform, lumber slide, steam heat dry kiln, oil house, office, a couple of lumber sheds, and a brick lined pit for burning refuse were shown on the map. A pump to draw water from the lake, electric lights and a night watchman were also noted.
The steam power to run the operations came by way of the creek that ran down the canyon. Its flow was dammed and a portion of the water redirected to the mill’s boilers. Another portion was used for the log flume that extended over the streetcar tracks, shooting the logs out into the lake to be stored until the time was right to be fed into the sawmill. The cutthroat trout, coho and sockeye salmon ceased to be found along the creek once the mill work began.
Transportation was difficult. Mud abounded and overwhelmed. Local lumber deliveries were made by teams of horses and wagon up the steep canyon to Waters Street or by scow to wharves along the shore. It wasn’t until 1908 that the half-mile extension of Rainier Avenue between Rainier Beach and the mill was begun by the city. Loads of lumber were hauled to Renton by boxcars and flatcars on the rail as well as north through Rainier Valley. In 1912 City of Seattle filed suit to condemn property to widen and construct Rainier Avenue all the way to Renton. The mill property was included in the suit.
At the time, the Taylors were buying the land from Sturtevant on contract. Sturtevant vigorously asserted the shoreland property owners’ right to ownership of not only land between high and low tide but also to the new land that would be created upon the forthcoming lowering of the lake for the ship canal. The State would eventually have the final say. The Taylor Mill survived.
The Taylor wharf served various purposes. In 1904, a free boat to Hillman’s Garden of Eden, today’s Newcastle, was advertised - just take the Washington Street carline to Taylor sawmill. In 1912 Seattle Brewing & Malting Company included in their Lake Washington deliveries a Friday stop at Taylor Mill featuring their Rainier Pale Beer, “a Mild Table Beer of Unquestioned Purity." In June 1905, the Seattle Daily Times reported, “The Rainier Beach Lumber Company is working night and day to fill the orders for the men who are building small homes in southeast Seattle.” The source for logs was now the south end of Lake Washington, around today’s Skyway, Renton, and Newcastle.
In April of 1906, The Seattle Star reported the mill had been “greatly handicapped by the
shortage of logs.” Nationwide financial troubles caused the mill to shut down for a couple
of weeks in January of 1908. Again in 1912, insufficient logs resulted in a temporary shutdown.
The work was also dangerous. Dr. J.L. Hutchinson arrived in Rainier Beach in 1907 and Taylor Mill was a frequent stop as injured workers needed emergency care. In 1909, a Seattle Star headline read: “Logger DyingWith His Spine Broken” after a heavy log had rolled over him. In 1913, a man had an “arm entirely severed from his body” while working behind the planer. Interestingly, a 1915 photo of the streetcar tracks running through the mill shows a sign advertising the Renton undertaker.
As a child, Mort Taylor remembered three or four furnished bunkhouses at the creek. “I got down there and I got fleas; wasn’t to go down to the bunkhouse anymore. About 100 people worked at the mill, a lot very young. 22 cents an hour for taking the lumber away from the conveyor and piling it. My grandmother ran a restaurant there for the men, three meals a day, for a week, for $8.50. They still made enough money to pay the grocery bill.”
In May 1913, Rainier Valley Record ran with the news: the Seattle Port Commission’s “New $80,000 Ferry for Lake Washington Will Be Constructed in Rainier Valley.” In fact, the completed steel hull was shipped by freight cars from the Duthie shipyards in the East Waterway of the Duwamish to Taylor Mill in August of that year. There the hull was reassembled, the boilers and engines installed by shipyard men. Taylor Mill men produced and installed the woodwork for the decks and deckhouses.
The LESCHI was a side- wheeled ferry powered by steam which provided service between Leschi Park, Bellevue and Medina at speeds between 14 to 15 knots. Its deck length was 169 feet. Capacity was 30 vehicles on the main deck and 275 seated passengers. The launch took place with great fanfare at Taylor Mill on December 6, 1913. Eleanor Chittenden, daughter of Hiram Chittenden, conducted the christening.
In June of 1915, at 85 years of age, John S. Taylor, Sr. passed away at his home. He was survived by his wife, Jeanette, his three sons, and his daughter, Mrs. Margaret Metcalf. His funeral was held at the Grace M.E. Church in Rainier Heights with 1,000 people in attendance.
He left the bulk of his estate to his wife - 66 and 2/3 shares in Taylor Mill Company valued at $3,000. The other shares were owned by his sons who had previously taken over much of the management of the incorporated mill, with William serving as vice-president, John, Jr. as secretary treasurer and David as mill foreman. Margaret and her husband, Morton Metcalf ran the TaMill branch post office (established 1909) and local confectionary.
A lawsuit was filed by C. Salvino in September 1916 for failure to make payment for $664 worth of logs sold and delivered to the mill. The suit claimed Taylor Mill was insolvent and unable to pay. Taylor Mill was also indebted to another 30 individuals for cutting and preparing logs and ties, and they filed suit. Then, there was the debt to Cedar Lake Logging Company, Hewitt-Lea Lumber Company, Puget Sound Machinery Company, and others.
On November 23, 1916, the Superior Court of King County announced a receiver’s sale of Taylor Mill Company. Offers were being taken for the Sturtevant’s Rainier Villa Tracts, all 45 lots including the shorelands plus the blacksmith shop, burner, drag saw and float, dry kilns and sheds, finishing sheds, fire apparatus, office buildings and furniture, oil house, pump house, planking, sawmill and machinery , store house, stable and equipment, 20 booms and 8 boom chains, lumber trucks, scows, horses, wagons, harnesses, clear logs and culled logs. The Taylors had lost the mill.
The Orvis Lumber Company was the only bidder, at $8,500, contingent on an agreement to be made with Hillman Investment Company regarding a mortgage of $18,700 that had been taken out on the mill property in 1914. The first note was due in March 1917 and Orvis wanted assurance Hillman would allow an extension of time for payment, if needed. Ultimately, Seattle Mill & Logging Company, “Operating Taylor’s Mill,” reopened the mill in the spring of 1917.
The new ownership switched out the machinery for an expected output at 65,000 to 75,000 feet per day at full operation. John Taylor, Jr. and William Taylor continued at the mill, as foreman and lumberman, respectively. In August of 1916, the communities around the lake had begun to experience first-hand the effects of the near completion of the long in the making Government Locks and Lake Washington ship canal. Since Hiram M. Chittenden, Seattle district engineer of the Army Corps of Engineers, had been put in charge, the project had visibly taken shape.
As the sluice gates on the east end of the Montlake Cut were opened, the lake waters gradually flowed westward until the level of Lake Washington was equal to the level of Lake Union, lowering the lake by some nine feet or so. With passage by ocean-going vessels now possible between Lake Washington and Salmon Bay, new opportunities arose for the mill.
The Grays Harbor Motorship Corporation began building wooden sailing ships during WWI. After the war, the company shifted its focus and in 1919 built three large barkentines (FOREST FRIEND, FOREST PRIDE, and FOREST DREAM), which featured one square-rigged foremast and three or more schooner rigged masts. In September 1923, FOREST FRIEND was towed by tug boats through Lake Washington ship canal to Seattle Mill & Logging Company.
The five masted vessel was the largest ever to load on Lake Washington at the time and the first ocean-going carrier to berth at the sawmill. With a crew of 16 men, the barkentine was loaded with 1,550,000 board feet of lumber, towed back through the ship canal and off Cape
Flattery, and then sailed swiftly for San Pedro, California.
The floodgates had literally been opened. In February 1924, per the Seattle Daily Times, the steamer ROSALIE MAHONY was loaded with 1,000,000 feet of lumber headed for California. The article noted Seattle Mill & Logging Company then employed 200 men, operating two shifts from 7.am. until 12 midnight. Average daily capacity: 200,000 feet. In December 1924, The Marine Digest announced that the Matson steamship MAHUKONA entered Lake Washington to load 600,000 feet of lumber at Taylor Mill, bound for Hawaii.
The mill suffered a fire in August of 1926 with loss estimated at less than $2,000. Value of the mill: $300,000. The last Polk’s Seattle City Directory entry noted for Seattle Mill & Logging Company was in 1928. Seaport Lumber Company purchased the mill in 1929. The steam schooner SS SKAGWAY, capable of carrying 1,500,000 board feet of lumber, was listed in the June of 1929 Vessels in Port section of the Seattle Daily Times as loading at Taylor Mill.
By the late 1920s Pioneer Sand & Gravel Company had bunkers at Rainier Beach and became owners of the mill wharf. According to Seattle Municipal Archives, in 1935 the Taylor Mill site was proposed for use as a seaplane base. The February of 1938 Puget Sound Regional Archives’ images of the mill site show a desolate and decrepit scene.
In October of 1938, a seven-year-old Rainier Beach boy did not return home from an errand one Saturday afternoon and his body was found the next day in the water beneath
the unused gravel dock. In November, Dr. Hutchinson, president of the Rainier Beach Men’s
Club, successfully led the community outcry for destruction of the wharf and removal of “the old Taylor Mill.”
In September 1943, the Seattle Daily Times real estate advertisements offered 40 lots with shorelands at the Old Taylor Mill site, along with “Old buildings with lots of good lumber” and “Beautiful year round TROUT STREAM crosses many lots.” Mort Taylor remembered gravel and rocks were brought in to cover the sawdust fill that had accumulated.
As for the Taylors, Mrs. J. S. Taylor, Sr., that is, Jeanette, had passed away in her home at 9963 Rainier Avenue South in December 1924. In the 1930 U.S. Census, her son, John, Jr. lived at 9957 Rainier Avenue South. At age 64, his occupation was listed as boom-man, working the floating logs. His sister Margaret lived a few houses down.
In 1935, John Sanford Taylor, Jr. passed away. He was spared the drowning boy tragedy and the destruction of the mill. What do remain today, in plain view, are the Taylor family residences overlooking the north end of the mill site and the old Taylor Mill Grocery, now an upscale pizzeria. In addition, the many families whose livelihood depended on the mill share memories and family history connected to the Rainier Valley timber industry.
The Taylors live on.
A Tidbit from Seattle’s Timber Industry...
In the early 1880s, David Denny, one of the wealthiest citizens of Seattle, operated the Western Mill at the south end of Lake Union. Western Mill was a success story even before Seattle’s Great Fire of 1889. The loss of the mills along the downtown waterfront to the quick flames provided ample opportunity for Denny’s mill to further flourish, which it did. Despite this, the nationwide financial panic of 1893 led David Denny to bankruptcy and the mill went into receivership. David Denny never recovered his financial losses and died in 1903 virtually penniless. In 1909, under new ownership the original Western Mill burned down. Another mill was built. Such is life in the timber industry.
A thank you to Eleanor Boba and Teresa Anderson
Article sources:
The Seattle Daily Times 2/18/1913; 8/2/1926; 11/7/1938;1995 RVHS oral
history: David Morton Taylor; The Seattle Star, 8/2/1912; San Juan Islander, 1/11/1908;
Rainier Valley Record, 4/19/1912; The Timberman, Volume 18, p9; The Marine Digest,
October 6, 1923; The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 7, 1891; Karl House, Maritime
historian; Patrick Trotter, biologist/author. The Puget Sound Lumberman Index of Lumber
Businesses & Mills, King County, Washington; The Lake Washington Story by Lucile McDonald;
The Story of Bryn Mawr by Harold" Jiggs" Hoyt; Seattle-A Tale of Between Two Cities by
Harold "Jiggs" Hoyt; Renton From Coal to Jets by Morda Slauson; Puget Sound Regional
Archives; King County Archives; History of Seattle From The Earliest Settlement to the
Present Time, Volume 3, by Clarence Bagley
Comments