Zosel Lumber Co

The operation known as Wm Zosel Lumber Company was founded to supply Pine box parts for the apple industry in Oroville and Tonasket in the North Okanogan Valley.

The Oroville mill site was the third mill operation site started by William and Katie Zosel since coming to the area in 1920.

The first mill site was on Pontiac Ridge above the town of Chesaw.  A few years later the mill was moved to a location know as the Lease Mill along the creek near Bonaparte Lake.

This location was where William ‘ Bill’ Zosel first made apple box parts that later became the main product of the mill in Oroville.

Part of the challenge in starting the mill in Oroville was a need for pond storage for the logs.  This was the reason for creation of the Okanogan River Dam known as Zosel Dam.

The Dam was rebuilt in 1985 into the modern structure that exists today, and provides elevation control for the Osoyoos Lake, an international body of water.

Steam driven engines provided the power to run the operations for many years until the boilers were shut down in 1966.  The steam engines were gradually replaced by modern electrical motors.   The boilers and smoke stacks were modified over the years and became an indicator of progress in the mill.

The mill house was constructed in 1926 and remodeled many times by Bill Zosel until his death in 1948.

Bill was a carpenter by trade prior to his venture into saw milling.

Large Pine logs were commonly harvested for the mill to be cut into box shook after the 6 ft band mill made the first cuts in the logs.  The current 6 ft band saw in the mill is in the same location as the original mill, and is the heart of the sawmill operation.

Katie's Story (1886-1967)

In 1920, Julius Richter of Chesaw, Washington, talked my husband Will Zosel into buying his small sawmill -- saying how much money he could make at the lumber business. It had been good at that time, but after we got there and busy at it, the bottom seemed to drop right out of the business.

So Will bought a hard tire Republic truck and some other sawmill machinery and loaded it with our furniture, which we took and some things of the August Richter family on to a box car and sent it to Oroville, Washington. Julius made the proposition that he would furnish the timber and cut it into logs. Zosels would haul them into the mill and manufacture the lumber and deliver the lumber to box cars; they would split the proceeds half and half. There was an 11 mile haul also to the box cars at Mincaster, B.C. Well, that first year we just shipped one car of lumber and collected only half of it -- so we could not live that way -- so we were very disappointed.

So Bill finally signed up with the Railroad G. N. Co. for a contract for railroad ties under the same agreement with Julius. The contract said he had to have a certain amount at Mincaster every week. We could have made a lot better at that if Julius could have kept us in logs, but he had a wheat farm that needed his attention and also a herd of cattle -- so it caused dissatisfaction when the mill had to be shut down because of lack of logs.

So Bill got interested in making apple box shooks in 1922. When the first contract was finished on the railroad ties, the price had come way down to only half the price as before, and one could not make anything at it. That country was not very good for drying lumber as we had too much rain that year.     The pine lumber had to be dried more quickly not to stain to a blue color. So the box shooks made that year were more or less a failure and had to be sold at a cheaper price.

The Oroville Warehouse Co. was one of our first customers at Oroville. They then were located just south where the firehouse is now. The old mill was not equipped for it either so they worked to a disadvantage, as the planer could just dress or plane one side of the boards at a time. If the boards were too thick, they had to take a sledge hammer and pound them through. This was because of the lack of power. They also had no room to set up their machinery … so it was either the sawmill machinery or the box factory machinery. They lost a lot of time and had a lot of extra work.

That part did not have much pine timber so that was another problem. When he started to make box shooks, he took in Walter Walden as his partner as he had been working for him ever since we had come to Chesaw.

Now to go back a little in my story ….. It was April 1920 when we left Seattle. James was just four weeks old to the day. Ralph was three years and one month older so this is when we started sawmill life.

In October 1922, Bill and Walter thought they would go to another location as there were more pine trees to be had for logs at Leese and a suitable place. We moved there … it was half way between Wauconda and Leese up on Bonaparte Creek, one mile from the main road and one mile from Turpin’s mill on a road leading up to Bonaparte Lake. This move cost a lot of effort as we had more to move and it also cost a lot to buy second hand machinery as boilers and engines and other machinery. They set up a separate sawmill and box factory and everything to make it workable.

They also built two houses, one for the Zosels and one for the Waldens. The land had been purchased from a Mrs. Rounds who now lives in Tonasket. They got their water out of Bonaparte Creek for their boilers. But we had a good spring on the place for drinking water.

By spring they were set up to make box shooks in earnest and it was a much better place to sun dry the pine lumber. But it was a 20 mile truck haul from Tonasket and 40 miles from Oroville.

Even Ralph and James who were 6 years and 3 years old had their own sawmill right against our house. They had pieces of iron and some broken pulleys for their machinery and branches of wood for their logs. And they were their own power and whistles, so when their dad’s mill would be busy, they also would be busy at theirs.

Lauren Thompson started to work for us in Chesaw in 1921 and continued with us with few interruptions. He got married to Ela Turpen on December 1, 1923. He helped us move from Chesaw to Leese and then again from Leese to Oroville, and he is still with the Zosel’s, even though working to a lesser degree now.

That October (1926) that we moved to Oroville, it rained quite a little and the roads were all ungraveled on the place here … so it was like traveling on soft soap. You could not get anywhere while it was raining. But it was a good site because of being right on the river and also right on the railroad tracks. In reality this was railroad property which we afterwards bought from them.

It was rather an open winter that year, so it was used … Bill had a garage and part of the house started in four days. He had a crew of workmen busy when we moved in on October 31, 1926. There was a roof on and some rough partitions up. I was afraid to sleep on the first floor in a strange place so we pulled several mattresses up into a hole that afterwards was our upstairs and tried to sleep there. Our cats and dog also felt strange here at the place. The cats climbed up on the roof where we could hear them all night meowing and the dog, Tiger, stayed in the house down stairs and he would bark every once in awhile.

We had to go to our upstairs apartment by climbing up a ladder. The next night we had a temporary door to one of our bedrooms so we slept downstairs. Bill did some work at the house each night by gasoline lamp light. And at day times he and a crew would be working at the mill site. So my house here was in building and being remodeled up to the time he died -- or for 22 years. He would always be changing something or trying to make it handier, or building on additions -- like the bathrooms and the dining room out from the back side of the kitchen, putting in picture windows instead of two or three small ones, and building cupboards.

After about 10 years, we also got a basement dug under the house. Ralph and James did most of the work at that. They rigged up a conveyor and ran the ground out towards the river, so the house finally got a cement foundation under it then.

This moving to Oroville meant a lot more expense; buying more second-hand machinery and also some new, to install. It meant building a dam across the Okanogan River to raise the water three feet so they could float the logs right to the mill. The first year here was quite late before they started to saw, but they made quite a few box shooks, so we felt like it had been a good move that we had made to Oroville.

They had to haul in a lot of gravel on the roads to make them passable and it seemed to keep going down … I said it was probably going down to China. So every year more gravel had to be put on.

It was in 1939 that we took in the boys both as partners in our business. Ralph took over the main bookkeeping and I was his helper in the office. Reports had to be made out that he did and he also took over the income tax reports. I took care of the sales and the logging and its payments, also the Industrial Insurance reports and wrote most of the checks. And things ran more smoothly in the office.

We sold retail all kinds of building materials and  lumber of all kinds; nails, windows, doors, shingles, roofing paper, plaster board, and everything that was needed to build and finish a house. This went on until 1942 when the war put a cramp on getting things.

So things went on from day to day; I tried a number of times to get Bill to retire from the business and take things easier, but he would not hear of it. He always said he would not know what to do with himself if he did not have wheels going around; that he wanted to stay with the business. So I just made up my mind to live and die at the sawmill after that.

On October 9 (1948), he drove up into his logging operations to see a new road that was being built and that evening he said as he was eating supper that we should move up into the hills as he had felt so much better while he was up there.