Pacific Lumber Company
The Pacific Lumber Company, officially abbreviated PALCO, and also commonly known as PL, was one of California's major logging and sawmill operations, located 28 miles (45 km) south of Eureka and 244 miles (393 km) north of San Francisco. Begun in 1863, PALCO was carefully managed over most of the twentieth century by generations of the Simon J. Murphy, Sr. Family or managers chosen by the Murphys from 1905 through 1985. Primary operations existed in massive log storage and milling operations at the historic company town of Scotia, California, located adjacent to US 101 along the Eel River. Secondary mills were located in nearby Fortuna and Carlotta. PALCO had extensive timber holdings exceeding well over 200,000 acres (890 km²) in the Redwood and Douglas-Fir forests of Humboldt County. For generations, it was one of the largest private employers in the entire region, appropriately known as the Redwood Empire.
The once storied company and its historically positive relationship with conservationists begun in the 1920s was altered drastically after a hostile stock market takeover, began late in 1985, deposed the Murphy family from its historic role of control and stewardship by early 1986. The company was transformed into a wholly owned subsidiary of Maxxam, Inc for its two final decades and extensive logging departed from sustained yield practices that the company had been previously known for in the industry. In January 2007 the company filed for bankruptcy protection. On July 29, 2008, the "Final Order" from US Bankruptcy attorney, Judge Richard Schmidt, led to the transfer of the assets of the bankrupt PALCO and all its subsidiaries to the Mendocino Redwood Company and the town of Scotia to Marathon Structured Finance. After 145 years as PALCO, the new company is known as the Humboldt Redwood Company. Some of the affected parties, including Bank of New York Trust Company, filed an appeal and on September 29, 2009 the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit modified this judgment. However, the asset transfer and resulting companies were little changed by the modification and no other adjustments of any significance have occurred since.
Read more about Pacific Lumber Company: Overview, Railroads, Environmental Issues
Famous quotes containing the words pacific, lumber and/or company:
“We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“a child who traced voyages
indelibly all over the atlas, who now in a far country
remembers the first river, the first
field, bricks and lumber dumped in it ready for building,
that new smell, and remembers
the walls of the garden, the first light.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)