Fire causes heavy damage to former Snohomish mill
Published 9:30 am Wednesday, August 28, 2019
SNOHOMISH — A two-alarm fire destroyed much of a shuttered lumber mill early Wednesday.
The Seattle-Snohomish Mill had opened in 1941, on the south side of the city’s riverfront. The family-owned company sawed its last logs in 2015.
The county fire marshal was investigating what caused flames to break out around 12:45 a.m., collapsing roofs and warping metal.
The scene is directly across the river from boutiques in downtown Snohomish, alongside a bridge that is a main route to downtown.
Investigators sifted through wreckage — no longer smoldering — through the afternoon Wednesday.
The mill had been considered an important part of the city’s heritage and was among the survivors in a shrinking lumber industry when it announced it would close. It later was used to store mattresses.
County assessor’s records show the former mill still owns the property at 9525 Airport Way.
At the time of its closure, the company employed 68 people. No other mills were running in the city.
“Mills were a really big part of the city’s early history,” then-city manager Larry Bauman told The Daily Herald in 2015. “It’s the end of an era for us.”
The Seattle-Snohomish Mill had been in the family for four generations, selling 20- to 40-foot planks of Douglas and Hem-Fir timber.
Ownership said they closed because the market was overloaded with lumber, with little demand for it, as the building industry slowly recovered from the recession.
The mill had closed for eight months in 2012, and struggled to stay afloat after reopening.
At the time of the closure in 2015, its last president, Megan McMurray, said she had no plans to reopen — but left open the possibility that someone else could one day run the operation as a mill again.
“This is permanent for me, I’m not looking to come back,” McMurray said. “The goal would be to see this place be a sawmill and run in some capacity, but I would not be involved. I just don’t see it.”
Caleb Hutton: 425-339-3454; chutton@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snocaleb.
