Glenbrook, Benton County, Oregon

 One of the first things you might notice on entering the Benton County exhibition in the Corvallis Museum is this photograph on the wall to your right. 

Construction of a Mill Pond Dam by the Jamestown-Oregon, Lumber Company

 
The photograph is titled, “Construction of a Mill Pond Dam, Glenbrook, 1919.”  I must confess that when I first saw it, I had no idea where Glenbrook was located.  For others equally puzzled, Glenbrook is on Hammer Creek, about three miles southwest of Alpine, in the southern part of Benton County.

In 1919, the company began construction of a wooden buttress dam on Hammer Creek.  This type of dam has a solid earthen wall on one side and log buttresses at an angle on the other to support the dam and keep the water pressure from pushing it over. You can see the wood buttresses in the middle of the photograph, in front of the dam. The 100-foot-long dam created a log pond and also provided electricity to run the mill.

View of Glenbrook, Oregon, log pond circa 1930

The railroad tracks on the left extended over 5 miles west into the company's timber holdings. To the east, the Southern Pacific line up-graded its rails on the line to Alpine to accommodate the heavier loads.

On the right, a sawmill is under construction.  The timber for this construction came from logging camps run by the company.  The finished mill was equipped with the machinery standard for such mills at the time including:  a 10-foot Allis Chalmer band saw, a 12 x 72-inch Sumner Iron Works edger, a 48 foot automatic air line trimmer and slasher, and a 66 inch upright Mershon resaw. This machinery was valued at $250,000.  The mill had a capacity of 125,00 feet of lumber per day.

The company also planned to construct two boilers an additional planing mill, and storage facilities.

The company expected to eventually hire between 350 to 500 people.  In order to attract workers, the company also built houses, a general store and a pool hall.

The entire operation opened August 24, 1920 with a barbecue, attended by between 1500 and 2000 people. They were entertained by speeches, sight-seeing tours, and band and orchestra performances.  A baseball game and tug of war, diving, and nail-driving contests were also part of the day's festivities.

Hiring at the mill created a boom in Glenbrook, resulting in additional houses, a new school, a doctor's office, a store, and a barbershop. 

In November 1925, the entire operation was abruptly closed down and the company departed.  No explanation was given locally, but there were rumors of mismanagement and corruption. No taxes had been paid for several years.

Several other sawmills operated in this location including Christianson Brothers Lumber in the 1930s and Hogan's mill in the 1940s and 1950s. 

By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon