Potlatch, Idaho — Company Ordered a Town

Most towns grow.

Potlatch was ordered.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, lumber companies wanted northern Idaho's enormous stands of white pine.

Potlatch Lumber Company selected a mill site north of Moscow where essentially no town existed.

So it built one.

Streets, houses, stores, schools, churches and utilities appeared around one of the world's largest white-pine sawmills.

The company owned much of the community, and housing reflected employment hierarchy.

It even built the Washington, Idaho and Montana Railway to connect the mill with outside rail lines and logging country.

For decades, the mill whistle organized daily life.

Then the company-town system unwound.

Roads and automobiles made workers less dependent on company housing and stores, and the original mill eventually closed.

Potlatch survived as an incorporated community after the industrial machine that designed it changed dramatically.

The company needed lumber.

First it had to manufacture a town.