coastal lumber co history

3195, was built by Vulcan Foundry Limited, a venerable English maker of locomotives that was founded in 1832.

The steam donkey, invented in 1880, greatly increased the efficiency of logging operations in Oregon’s forests.

These entrepreneurs came to the Pacific Coast from the exhausted pine forests of Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin with deep pockets of capital, looking for “other worlds to conquer,” in the words of an 1898 article in the Coos Bay News.

Invented by John R. McGiffert circa 1900 and manufactured by the Clyde Iron Works in Duluth, Minnesota, it was a massive, ungainly looking machine that rose off a railroad track and stood on stilts, as it is in this photograph.

A family in a high-wheeled cart in front of their cabin in a logging camp called Camp Perry near New Bern in 1908.

Workers resting on a log behind a relatively small slip-tongue logging cart called a “high wheeler,” perhaps near New Bern, 1910.

Below, is a McGiffert log loader in a forest near New Bern, almost certainly on lands owned by the Roper Lumber Co. in 1911.

By 1920, about half the loggers and sawmill workers on Coos Bay worked for him.

The federal government acquired the area in November 1933.

At the time of this photo in 1941, Weyerhaeuser Klamath Falls employed approximately 1,200 men and produced 200 million feet of wood products each year.

When the loggers and sawmill workers organized in 1947, the company refused to negotiate with their union, leading to a yearlong strike.

Founded in 1983, Coastal Forest Products began operations in Manchester, NH and moved into a 25,000 sq. ft. facility in Hooksett, NH a year later.

Tragically, a fire in 1996 destroyed the company’s Hooksett facility.

In 1998, Coastal purchased Quality Wood Priming in nearby Bow, NH and added wood priming and custom finishing to its portfolio of value-added services.

In 2003, a 75,000 sq. ft. addition to this facility allowed more product line expansion as manufactured and composite products increased in popularity.

Engineered Wood Products were added to the line-up in 2004, once again aligning ourselves with the best manufacturers in the category.

Recognizing our unique position in the market and the potential for additional growth, the company then purchased a 66 acre parcel of land in Bow with rail capability and in 2018 broke ground on a 260,000 sq. ft state-of-the art facility.