More than pulp and steam

When I was a kid, I judged Everett’s Kimberly-Clark mill by its cover: a hulking shoebox of red brick — plain and industrial-cold.

And by its smell. In the 1970s, pulp was the city’s great equalizer. It didn’t discriminate. The mill stench leached into homes and sat in kitchens, greeting fam

ilies first thing in the morning. An odor of rotten eggs cut the salt air as the North Everett elite and not-so-elite fetched The Herald off the front porch.

So when I finally visited the Kimberly-Clark mills a few years ago, I secretly expected a scene from a Walker Evans Depression-era photo. But the inside was as clean and technologically advanced as the outside seemed a relic. As The Herald wrote last week, when the company announced that it had no likely buyers and planned to close the plant next year, this is not your grandfather’s pulp mill.

Like the building, the Kimberly-Clark narrative (and before that Scott and before that Soundview and before that Puget Sound Pulp and Timber) is more complicated and rich than it first seems.

At a young age I learned that the history of the Pacific Northwest is the history of labor. Families didn’t move to Everett for water views of the serried Olympics. My grandfather, whom I never met, emigrated from Norway and took a job paving the streets of a newly platted Everett. That was back when roads were buckled ribbons of calf-deep mud. It was hard work. In fact, everything was work. Labor, much of it back-breaking and tedious, was the soul of the city.Peter Jackson married a fellow Norwegian immigrant, Marine Anderson, and built a home on Oakes. They had five children, one of whom died as a teen from Spanish flu. The youngest, my father, went on to a life of politics and never had to buckle down in the mills.

I don’t know if my grandfather made it past primary school, and he never attended college. The Kimberly-Clark mill is one of the last workplaces where someone can go straight from Cascade or Everett High School to a living-wage job. That will change, of course, if it hasn’t already.

My lasting Kimberly-Clark memory is the announcement board. Grouped between various notices were the anniversaries: head shots of workers, rows of them, celebrating 30 or 40 years of service. With the possible exception of Boeing, it’s difficult to imagine any workplace with that kind of longevity.

Today the Kimberly-Clark mill is an orphan, the last real mill on a waterfront once hemmed by mills. Everett can be an unsentimental place, and for some the impulse will be to shrug and recall various extractive industries that also suffered and faded away.

That would be an uncreative acceptance that diminishes a town elevated and bound together by working people. Give up without a farsighted, coordinated response and we not only judge the Kimberly-Clark mill by its cover, we allow, as workers said a century ago, the big-company bosses to win.

Pete Jackson, a former gubernatorial speechwriter, is an editor at Crosscut.com in Seattle.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Local News

A firefighter stands in silence before a panel bearing the names of L. John Regelbrugge and Kris Regelbrugge during the ten-year remembrance of the Oso landslide on Friday, March 22, 2024, at the Oso Landslide Memorial in Oso, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
‘Flood of emotions’ as Oso Landslide Memorial opens on 10th anniversary

Friends, family and first responders held a moment of silence at 10:37 a.m. at the new 2-acre memorial off Highway 530.

Julie Petersen poses for a photo with images of her sister Christina Jefferds and Jefferds’ grand daughter Sanoah Violet Huestis next to a memorial for Sanoah at her home on March 20, 2024 in Arlington, Washington. Peterson wears her sister’s favorite color and one of her bangles. (Annie Barker / The Herald)
‘It just all came down’: An oral history of the Oso mudslide

Ten years later, The Daily Herald spoke with dozens of people — first responders, family, survivors — touched by the deadliest slide in U.S. history.

Victims of the Oso mudslide on March 22, 2014. (Courtesy photos)
Remembering the 43 lives lost in the Oso mudslide

The slide wiped out a neighborhood along Highway 530 in 2014. “Even though you feel like you’re alone in your grief, you’re really not.”

Director Lucia Schmit, right, and Deputy Director Dara Salmon inside the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management on Friday, March 8, 2024, in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
How Oso slide changed local emergency response ‘on virtually every level’

“In a decade, we have just really, really advanced,” through hard-earned lessons applied to the pandemic, floods and opioids.

Ron and Gail Thompson at their home on Monday, March 4, 2024 in Oso, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
In shadow of scarred Oso hillside, mudslide’s wounds still feel fresh

Locals reflected on living with grief and finding meaning in the wake of a catastrophe “nothing like you can ever imagine” in 2014.

Imagine Children's Museum's incoming CEO, Elizabeth "Elee" Wood. (Photo provided by Imagine Children's Museum)
Imagine Children’s Museum will welcome new CEO in June

Nancy Johnson, who has led Imagine Children’s Museum in Everett for 25 years, will retire in June.

Kelli Littlejohn, who was 11 when her older sister Melissa Lee was murdered, speaks to a group of investigators and deputies to thank them for bringing closure to her family after over 30 years on Thursday, March 28, 2024, at Snohomish County Superior Court in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
‘She can rest in peace’: Jury convicts Bothell man in 1993 killing

Even after police arrested Alan Dean in 2020, it was unclear if he would stand trial. He was convicted Thursday in the murder of Melissa Lee, 15.

Ariel Garcia, 4, was last seen Wednesday morning in an apartment in the 4800 block of Vesper Dr. (Photo provided by Everett Police)
Everett police searching for missing child, 4

Ariel Garcia was last seen Wednesday at an apartment in the 4800 block of Vesper Drive. The child was missing under “suspicious circumstances.”

The rezoned property, seen here from the Hillside Vista luxury development, is surrounded on two sides by modern neighborhoods Monday, March 25, 2024, in Lake Stevens, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Despite petition, Lake Stevens OKs rezone for new 96-home development

The change faced resistance from some residents, who worried about the effects of more density in the neighborhood.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, left, introduces Xichitl Torres Small, center, Undersecretary for Rural Development with the U.S. Department of Agriculture during a talk at Thomas Family Farms on Monday, April 3, 2023, in Snohomish, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Under new federal program, Washingtonians can file taxes for free

At a press conference Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene called the Direct File program safe, easy and secure.

Former Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy Jeremie Zeller appears in court for sentencing on multiple counts of misdemeanor theft Wednesday, March 27, 2024, at Snohomish County Superior Court in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Ex-sheriff’s deputy sentenced to 1 week of jail time for hardware theft

Jeremie Zeller, 47, stole merchandise from Home Depot in south Everett, where he worked overtime as a security guard.

Everett
11 months later, Lake Stevens man charged in fatal Casino Road shooting

Malik Fulson is accused of shooting Joseph Haderlie to death in the parking lot at the Crystal Springs Apartments last April.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.