From the Tacoma Historical Society Twitter/X social media.
An unidentified driver and two St. Regis timber workers sent a load of logs on its way from Camp #2 in Mineral to the company’s paper mill in Tacoma in August of 1949. In 1949, St. Regis was making kraft paper in six of their mills: about 360,000 tons of kraft paper per year.
Tacoma was the newest kraft paper producing mill; production began there January 1949. St. Regis purchased a mill in Tacoma in 1930; they spent years modernizing and expanding the company’s facilities. Before 1949 they had only manufactured pulp and bags at the Tacoma plant.
In 1985 the mill became Simpson Tacoma Kraft Co. when it was purchased by Simpson Paper Co. of San Francisco. WestRock, which acquired the mill from Simpson in 2014, announced this past week that it would close the 94-year-old mill.
