Potlatch, Idaho: The Lumber Company Town

Potlatch did not grow; it was built. In nineteen oh three, Frederick Weyerhaeuser and his partners incorporated the Potlatch Lumber Company to harvest the white pine forests of northern Idaho. Soon after, the company laid out a complete company town on the hillside: houses for workers near the mill, managers' homes farther away from the smoke, a school, a church, a gym, a hospital, an opera house, and a company store.

When the sawmill opened in nineteen oh six, it was the largest white pine mill in the world. Hundreds of workers kept it running. The company owned everything.

If you lived in Potlatch, you lived at the company's pleasure. The mill ran until nineteen eighty-one, three quarters of a century. The town survived it, incorporated as an independent city, and the name it carries comes from the Chinook trade-language word for a ceremonial feast of giving.