When the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle was founded in 1888, its developers organized a business, Fremont Milling Company, at the small canal at the northwest corner of Lake Union. Timber was cleared from Fremont’s hillsides and skidded down to the water to await cutting into lumber for housebuilding. Cut lumber could be loaded onto the railroad and sent into downtown Seattle, or outward to the expanding communities along the rail line.
Before the present Fremont Bridge was built, the Fremont Mill had this office on Fremont Avenue. Photo of UW Special Collections, James Patrick Lee.
Seattle’s home-grown railroad, the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern, impacted the growth of the Fremont neighborhood, making Fremont a successful commercial site. Fremont and the railroad grew up together in 1888 as the tracks ran east-west parallel to North 34th Street, along the line of a small canal called The Outlet from Lake Union.
By the end of 1888 the SLS&E Railroad had reached Snoqualmie Falls, about thirty miles east of Seattle. The SLS&E organizers then set about to build a northern branch of the railroad. From Woodinville, northeast of Seattle, a new line was built northward into Snohomish County. It reached the towns of Arlington & Bryant near the Stillaguamish River in June 1890.
This blog article will tell how the Bryant Lumber Company came to acquire the Fremont Mill in Seattle in 1894.
The old Fremont Trestle bridge in 1915 before the creation of the new ship canal and new Fremont Bridge. Bryant Lumber is shown in clouds of steam at lower right. Photo courtesy of UW Special Collections, Hamilton #3959.
Snohomish County expands with logging
The coming of the SLS&E Railroad in 1890 caused a great increase in logging activity in Snohomish County, north of Seattle, as there was now a way to carry out the timber. Prior to the railroad, the only real way to transport timber was via floating out on the Stillaguamish River, westward towards Stanwood.
Charles Verd (1841-1914)
Charles Verd (1841-1914) was among the logging industry men from Michigan who began to populate King & Snohomish Counties when the railroad opened up remote areas. In Woodinville in 1888, Charles Verd met Thomas Sanders (1856-1914). The two men had similar backgrounds as both had immigrant parents and had lived in Canada before moving to Michigan.
Despite being about fifteen years younger than Charles Verd, Thomas Sanders got to the Pacific Northwest first. He came to Woodinville in 1879 and in 1883 he married Mary Woodin, daughter of Ira Woodin.
In 1889 the Verd & Sanders Logging Company was formed. Then in 1891 the two men incorporated the Bryant Lumber & Shingle Company. They started operating in the Arlington & Bryant areas, on the north fork of the Stillaguamish River in Snohomish County.
One of Charles Verd’s sons wrote that “As the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad reached out into the valleys and hills, new towns and settlements were built almost overnight. Mills were built, logging camps were opened up, new enterprises were ventured…. The rebuilding of Seattle in 1889 (after the Fire) was another new venture that helped to advance this period of prosperity.” (Page 109, The Story of a Great Forest, see source list).
Photo courtesy of Stillaguamish Valley Museum, Arlington, WA.
The Bryant place name
As the SLS&E Railroad came through, it established stations which often became place names and post offices. The area about three miles north of Arlington was called Bryant, and by 1893 it had a post office. The origins of the Bryant name are not clear. It could have been in tribute to a local resident, or in tribute to the railroad stop. In 1893 the SLS&E Railroad was acquired by a bigger company, the Northern Pacific. One of the officers of the Northern Pacific was John H. Bryant, and it may be that the station was named for him.
At Bryant there was an excellent stand of old-growth fir and cedar trees. Conditions were ideal as the ground was mostly level and they had the new rail line at Bryant for loading the logs. In May 1892 Bryant Lumber received an order for ship’s spars, seventy feet long. In June 1892 they filled an order for logs for the Washington State exhibition building at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.
Photo courtesy of the Stillaguamish Valley Museum, Arlington, WA.
From Bryant to Fremont
Verd & Sanders sold their logs to various mills, including the Fremont Milling Company in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. This company had been set up in 1888 by Fremont’s founders with Isaac Burlingame as mill manager. In 1894 Verd & Sanders purchased this mill and that is how it came to be known as the Bryant Lumber Company in Fremont. In this way Verd & Sanders controlled both ends of the lumber business, from logging to milling. Logs from the Bryant area in Snohomish County were sent by rail to the mill in Fremont in Seattle. Bryant Lumber in Fremont employed more than one hundred men, and an equal number in the logging operations in Bryant, Snohomish County.
The Verd & Sanders families moved to Fremont in about 1895. When they became the owners of Bryant Lumber in Fremont, Verd & Sanders ran the mill with their adult sons. Charles Verd had six sons, and he installed his eldest son Edward T. Verd as manager; his second son Charles Jr., became sawmill foreman. Homer Verd was the bookkeeper. Fourth son William Verd stayed in Bryant, Snohomish County, to oversee the logging operations.
Doric Lodge No. 92 at 619 North 36th Street in Fremont.
Thomas Sanders had four sons and as Charles Verd and Thomas Sanders got older and retired, their sons’ names became prominent in leadership in the Bryant Lumber Company and in the Fremont community.
The Verd brothers participated in Fremont’s Doric Lodge, a Masonic group. Edward T. Verd was Grand Master of the Doric Lodge in 1909 and took a major role in the new building for the Lodge that year. He donated the altar and much of the furniture for the building which today is still at 619 North 36th Street.
In 1922 Edward T. Verd was one of the organizers of the Queen City Bank at 3424 Fremont Avenue, along with John McMullen of the McMullen Fuel & Building Supplies Company. Like the Verds, the McMullen family had numerous sons who carried on in the next generation of the businesses which had been established in Fremont’s early years.
The Bryant Lumber Mill is rebuilt in 1902
A fire at the mill in 1902 caused the loss of some, but not all, of the buildings at Bryant Lumber. A new and better mill was quickly built, increasing the output to 175,000 board feet per day. The mill had several buildings for different aspects of production, including cedar shake shingles, and sash & door (smaller wood components for windows and doors).
Bryant Lumber log pond in 1915. Lake Union is at right. At top right in the background can be seen the Stone Way temporary bridge which was set up during ship canal construction. The present Fremont Bridge was completed in 1917. Photo courtesy of UW Special Collections LAR303, Frank LaRouche.
The coming of the ship canal
During 1911 to 1917 the Ship Canal was built along a similar route of the previous small canal leading from Lake Union. The years of construction caused some difficulties for Fremont businesses which were bypassed or could not use the canal. Bryant Lumber still did use a log pond east of the Fremont Bridge and they also had access to transporting products on the railroad line. The railroad route stayed about the same, and today that line is the Burke-Gilman Trail. The level of the present Fremont Bridge is higher than it was before creation of the ship canal, and the Trail goes underneath the bridge.
The Burke-Gilman Trail is the line of a former railroad and is parallel to the ship canal in Fremont. Photo by Valarie, looking eastward along North 34th Street in Fremont.
Changes in the 1930s
By the late 1920s the business environment was slowing down in Fremont. Edward Verd and the other organizers of the Queen City Bank built a new building in the Wallingford neighborhood and moved the bank there in 1925. In the 1930s during the deepening economic crisis throughout the USA, the Queen City Bank, Bryant Lumber, and McMullen Fuel & Building Supply companies all closed.
The McMullen Building on the ship canal celebration day, July 4, 1917. It was located at 34th & Phinney. The car barn of the streetcar system can be seen to the right of McMullen.
In 1939, J.R. Burke (no relation to Thomas Burke of the SLS&E Railroad) purchased the Bryant Lumber site to become Burke Millwork. The Bryant Lumber Company property was on North 34th Street on either side of the Fremont Bridge, alongside the railroad tracks and the ship canal. J.R. Burke also purchased the site of McMullen Fuel & Building Supply at the corner of 34th & Phinney and began the transformation of the canalside areas into an office park.
Today the business district in Fremont on North 34th Street is called the Silicone Canal for its high-tech companies in the office buildings. These include Adobe and Formidable (software developers), Tableau (visual analytics platform), Amgen (biotech), and Nvidia (chip maker); Geekwire (technology news site), Geocaching HQ, and PATH (global health nonprofit). These businesses are completely different from Fremont’s early years with a lumber mill, and yet the vigorous, enterprising spirit of the neighborhood lives on.
Boat parade on July 9, 2017, to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Photo by Valarie.
Sources:
Doric Lodge No. 92, Centennial History booklet, 1993.
Historic Resources Survey Report: Fremont. January 2010, Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.
The Story of a Great Forest 1888-1951, by Will H. Verd, 2008. Published by the Stillaguamish Valley Museum, Arlington, WA.
A Volume of Memoirs & Genealogy of Representative Citizens of the City of Seattle and County of King, Washington, 1903. Biography of Charles Verd on pages 516-518 and Thomas Sanders on pages 288-289.
Steam rises from Bryant Lumber at the old wooden trestle Fremont Bridge in 1915. Photo in Frank LaRouche Collection, UW Special Collections.
