Plum Creek Timber (NYSE: PCL) is the largest private landowner in the United States. Most of its lands were originally purchased, or otherwise acquired as timberland.
Headquartered in Suite 4300 at 999 Third Avenue in Seattle, Plum Creek was spun off from Burlington Resources as a master limited partnership on June 8, 1989. It converted to a real estate investment trust on July 1, 1999 in order to obtain tax and accounting advantages available to concerns primarily involved in real estate development.
Burlington Resources was created from the Burlington Northern railroad's natural resources holdings in 1988; Plum Creek Timber is therefore heir to some of the 47 million acres (190,000 km2) of timberland originally granted by the federal government to the Northern Pacific Railway in the 1860s.
Today Plum Creek Timber owns and manages timber lands in the United States. The company engages in the sale and management of timber lands, and the sale of nonstrategic timber lands. It also produces a line of softwood lumber products, including common and select boards, studs, edge-glued boards, and finger-jointed studs. These products are targeted to domestic lumber retailers, such as retail home centers, for use in repair and remodeling projects. These products are also sold to stocking distributors for use in home construction.
In addition, the company engages in the natural resource businesses that focus on opportunities relating to mineral extraction, natural gas production, and communication and transportation rights of way. As of December 31, 2004, the company owned and managed approximately 7.8 million acres (32,000 km²) of timber lands in the northwest, southern, and northeast U.S., as well as owned and operated 10 wood product conversion facilities in the northwest U.S.
Read more about Plum Creek Timber: Transactions With The U.S. Federal Government, Environmental Record
Famous quotes containing the words plum, creek and/or timber:
“Don’t tie your shoes in a melon patch, and don’t adjust your hat under a plum tree.”
—Chinese proverb.
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“The very timber and boards and shingles of which our houses are made grew but yesterday in a wilderness where the Indian still hunts and the moose runs wild.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)