Multnomah-Lincoln County OR Archives Biographies.....Johnson, C. D. 
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Ila Wakley iwakley@msn.com February 6, 2011, 3:31 pm

Source: History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Vol. III, Published 1928, Pages 859 - 861
Author: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company

     C. D. JOHNSON.  Gifted with clear vision, a genius for organization and 
an aptitude for successful management, C. D. Johnson has become one of the 
foremost lumbermen of the Pacific northwest and a power in constructive 
development. He maintains his headquarters in Portland and controls the 
operations of the Pacific Spruce Corporation, which has three subsidiaries, C. 
D. Johnson Lumber Company, Manary Logging Company and Pacific Spruce Northern 
Railway Company.

     In the paternal line Mr. Johnson is of English lineage and his maternal 
ancestors were natives of Scotland. C. D. Johnson was born at Cato, six miles 
from Corning, New York. At the age of twelve years he went to Kansas with his 
parents, who settled on a farm ten miles from Larned. When he was a young man 
of nineteen, the family moved to Kansas City, Kansas, and it was in that year 
that he went to Louisiana to seek his fortune.

     While acting as collector for a local firm in New Orleans, he met John 
Newton and became an employe in the latter's sawmill at Chopin, Louisiana. Mr. 
Johnson worked for five months on the trimmer and afterward was transferred to 
other departments, filling various positions in the mill. On leaving Chopin, 
he joined three young men and journeyed to Shreveport, Louisiana, proceeding 
from that point by rail to Carmona, Texas. They went there for the definite 
purpose of sawing logs in the woods and worked for Sam Allen, cutting logs at 
fifty cents a thousand. Mr. Johnson reached his majority while along the line 
of that section of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad known as the "Trinity 
Tap." Later he went to Barnum, Texas, as shipping clerk for A. W. Morris and 
was also made foreman of the lumber yard. For about a year and a half he 
remained with Mr. Morris, a pioneer in the sawmilling industry of Texas, and 
derived much benefit from that association. As the years passed he continued 
to absorb knowledge of the business, which was all grist to the mill of his 
strong and adaptable personality and helped him to work out his destiny.

     From the Trinity Tap country Mr. Johnson returned to Kansas City and next 
went to Chicago, becoming foreman for the South Branch Lumber Company in the 
days when Francis Beidler and B. F. Ferguson were dominant factors in the 
control of that corporation. After that experience he went to Clinton, Iowa, 
and trucked lumber for the W. J. Young Company. Then something better showed 
up. Going to New Lewisville, Arkansas, he was made foreman of the yard of the 
Sunny South Lumber Company and afterward became superintendent of the entire 
plant. While thus engaged he met Miss Dorothy Farrar, whom he married, and to 
them were born three sons: Dean, Ernest E., and Robert.

     Mr. Johnson remained in New Lewisville until the business came into the 
hands of R. L. Trigg and then went to St. Louis. There he incorporated the R. 
L. Trigg Lumber Company. At the time of the incorporation of the Frost-Trigg 
Lumber Company, the successor of the R. L. Trigg Lumber Company, Mr. Johnson 
assumed the duties of vice president and general manager. While manipulating 
the affairs of the Frost-Trigg Lumber Company he started the movement which 
resulted in the creation of the Union Sawmill Company and the Little Rock & 
Monroe Railway Company. He then became interested in the Lufkin (Texas) Land & 
Lumber Company. At that time he was president of the Union Sawmill Company and 
the Little Rock & Monroe Railway Company; vice president and general manager 
of the Frost-Trigg Lumber Company; a stockholder in the Lufkin Land & Lumber 
Company and a director of the Noble (La.) Lumber Company. Following the Frost-
Trigg Lumber Company organization, in which Mr. Johnson participated, and 
which included the Red River Lumber Company, the Noble Lumber Company, Inc., 
the Union Sawmill Company, the DeSota Land & Lumber Company, the Black Lake 
Lumber Company and the Star & Crescent Lumber Company, the Frost and Johnson 
interests in these institutions effected a reorganization under the style of 
the Frost-Johnson Lumber Company.

     In February, 1918, C. D. Johnson severed his connection with the Frost-
Johnson Lumber Company and for two years thereafter divided his time between 
New York and San Francisco, searching for an opportunity for an investment in 
western timber commensurate with his ideas. His first investment on the 
Pacific coast was in a sugar and white pine proposition, known as the Davies-
Johnson Lumber Company at Calpine, California, which he sold to his partners 
after the formation of the Pacific Spruce Corporation.

     Mr. Johnson is president of the Pacific Spruce Corporation, the C. D. 
Johnson Lumber Company, the Pacific Spruce Northern Railway Company and the 
Manary Logging Company. Through intensive study and years of practical 
experience he has acquired an exhaustive knowledge of the lumber industry, 
which has constituted his life work. In his character the qualities of 
enterprise and conservatism are happily blended and at all times he is 
actuated by an accurate sense of business exigency. It is by men of such well 
balanced nature that the best work is accomplished and the most enduring 
results obtained. They take no backward step and their attainment of a goal is 
not a temporary triumph but a permanent conquest.

     The Pacific Spruce Corporation may be said to date from November 17, 
1920, the day on which, as a corporation, it made a contract with the United 
States Spruce Production Corporation for taking over the property of that 
company in Lincoln County, Oregon. The officers of the Pacific Spruce 
Corporation are C. D. Johnson, president; Dean Johnson, vice president and 
general manager; E. E. Johnson, secretary-treasurer; R. S. Trumbull, assistant 
secretary; and J. F. Markham, assistant secretary-treasurer. The board of 
directors is comprised of H. B. Hewes of Jeanerette, Louisiana; Nathan Paine 
and Edward W. Paine of Oshkosh, Wisconsin; Mrs. Anne S. Downman and J. W. 
McWilliams of New Orleans, Louisiana; Clyde R. Lyon of Decatur, Illinois; C. 
D. Johnson and E. E. Johnson of Portland, Oregon; and Dean Johnson, of Toledo, 
Oregon.

     The corporation has in its possession today, inclusive of various tracts 
under option, approximately two billion feet of timber, its holdings being 
Sitka spruce and old growth yellow Douglas fir with a small percentage of 
western hemlock. It is not given to many lumber manufacturing firms to own and 
operate such an elaborately effective transportation system as does the 
Pacific Spruce Corporation. In this statement distinct reference is made to 
its facilities for getting its logs from the assembling point at South Beach 
to the mill; the handling of logs which come from Camp 12 through Depot slough 
to the mill; the towing of log rafts from Camp 1 on the Siletz river through 
the Pacific ocean to South Beach; the towing of all rafts of logs to the 
storage waters near the mill at Toledo, and the loading, towing and general 
handling of lighters from the mill at Toledo to shipside at the Newport clock. 
The crowning feature of the transportation service of the corporation is the 
operation of its steel steamers, "Robert Johnson" and "C. D. Johnson III". 
Rail shipments are made over the Southern Pacific line which extends from 
Yaquina through Toledo, via Corvallis, to the main line of the road at Albany, 
Oregon.

     The sawmill is so designed and equipped as to enable it to produce the 
highest grades of lumber in maximum quantity at minimum expense. The planing 
mill has been electrified and is a model institution. The power house, 
completed in April, 1922, is of reinforced concrete construction and equipped 
to carry an immense load. From it emanates the power which drives the 
machinery in the sawmill, all of the manufacturing divisions, and the monorail 
system. In addition it furnishes lights throughout the plant and also to the 
towns of Toledo and Newport. Each building is equipped with an automatic 
sprinkling system and the corporation has also installed other appliances 
which reduce the fire hazard to a minimum.

     In 1924 the corporation, through its president, donated a site for the 
Lincoln Hospital which was completed in 1925. The furnishings and equipment of 
the Lincoln Hospital are of the most modern character and highest quality 
obtainable. It is there that medical and surgical attention is given employees 
of the Pacific Spruce Corporation and its subsidiaries, although it is a 
general hospital and its service and accommodations are open to the public and 
any reputable licensed physician or surgeon is privileged to avail himself of 
the facilities provided for the prompt convenience and effective care of 
patients.

     The C. D. Johnson Lumber Company, with offices in the American Bank 
Building, Portland, Oregon, was incorporated January 18, 1922. Its officers 
are C. D. Johnson, president; Dean Johnson, vice president; and E. E. Johnson, 
secretary, all of whom are members of the board of directors.

     This is the exclusive selling agency for the Pacific Spruce Corporation. 
In the early period following the incorporation of the C. D. Johnson Lumber 
Company it proceeded slowly but surely, on specific lines laid out by C. D. 
Johnson, in its development of markets, and when the mill at Toledo began 
operating two shifts in 1923, it was in position to dispose of the entire 
output of the Pacific Spruce Corporation, a total of ten million feet of 
lumber monthly, with an ease which showed excellent groundwork in its 
organization. The C. D. Johnson Lumber Company is not alone looking to the 
immediate marketing of the output of the Pacific Spruce Corporation, but also 
looking far into the future when the nation will be more dependent on Pacific 
coast lumber products than it is today.The product of the mills of the Pacific 
Spruce Corporation is being carried into far lands and into every market in 
the United States, and through its activities the Pacific Spruce Corporation 
has done for Oregon and its commerce what no group of citizens, Chambers of 
Commerce or other organizations might have done, and has also given more 
active commercial uplift to Lincoln county than has ever before occurred in 
its history.

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