[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 89 (Wednesday, June 29, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Page S7611]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    A CENTURY FOR A ``COMPANY TOWN''

 Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, a small town in Idaho celebrates its 
100th birthday this month. Potlatch, named after the lumber company 
that made its home there in the early part of the 20th Century, was 
started by Frederick Weyerhaeuser after scouts reported that it would 
be a fine place to establish a lumber company. When the mill opened, it 
was the largest white pine sawmill in the world and, in a very 
interesting way, a social experiment. Weyerhaeuser built a ``company 
town'' including homes, churches, a post office, schools, commercial 
buildings and even an opera house and ensured the new towns 
connectivity to commerce by building a railroad. When you think about 
it, this is quite a phenomenal achievement even for a large company and 
showed tremendous business foresight as well as a consideration of the 
needs of its workers. Older residents even tell stories about the 
rather unique way that students were kept in line at school: if the 
students got into trouble, the parents were told that they would lose 
their job at the mill if the bad behavior continued. How times have 
changed!
  Although the population is only about half of what it was in its 
heyday, and no longer a ``company town,'' the notion of community that 
was bred over decades lives on in Potlatch residents today. I 
congratulate Potlatch on 100 years of community success.

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