Shevlin Hixon and Brooks Scanlon: The Two Great Mills

In the spring of nineteen sixteen, two months apart, two of the largest pine sawmills in the world opened on opposite banks of the Deschutes River just south of downtown Bend. The competition between them shaped the town for nearly seventy years. Shevlin Hixon opened first, in March, on the west bank of the river.

Brooks Scanlon followed in April on the east side. Each company employed more than two thousand workers at their peaks. Together they were turning out combined volumes of lumber that ranked among the highest production rates of any pine sawmills on earth.

The figure most often cited is more than five hundred million board feet produced jointly in a single year. Log booms stretched across the river to separate the two companies' timber, and the river itself delivered logs to the mills. The town of Bend existed to supply, house, and support those operations.

A railroad connection to the outside world, completed in nineteen eleven after a famous race between the Hill and Harriman lines up the Deschutes Canyon, made the whole enterprise possible. The two railroads had built parallel tracks through the same canyon in a competition so intense that construction crews reportedly came to blows. When both finally reached Bend, the timber could move to market, and the mills followed.

Shevlin Hixon closed in nineteen fifty when its timber supply was exhausted. Brooks Scanlon continued for another three decades before Mill A shut down in nineteen eighty three. By then Bend was already searching for its next identity.