Clark County history: Henry Pittock

Henry Pittock wasn’t the first to bring industry to Camas. Michael Simmons built a small shingle mill there and sold shakes to the Hudson’s Bay Company. Both businessmen landed at the juncture of the Columbia and Washougal rivers near today’s Georgia-Pacific mill.

Pittock came with his checkbook; he bought 2,600 acres and planned a company town with a paper mill. Pittock’s vision far exceeded a humble shingle mill. The paper mill created a community, prosperity and later a troubling environmental problem.

Born in England, Pittock emigrated to Pennsylvania with his family. He entered the printing trade. Just 17 years old, he trekked the Oregon Trail to Portland in 1853. Thomas Dryer, editor of The Weekly Oregonian, hired him for a printing job; within a few years they were partners.

In 1861, Pittock, just 24, started The Morning Oregonian. To differentiate his paper from the weeklies, he published six days a week, emphasizing news over opinion. He established telegraph accounts to gather news of the Civil War and, as a steadfast Republican, supported the Union. To succeed, Pittock aggressively pursued advertising, commercial printing and subscriptions. Yet over the years, his newspaper lost money. By 1900 he’d pledged his Portland home seven times to pay debts.

To cut printing costs, Pittock sought cheaper newsprint. So in 1883 he organized the Lacamas Colony in Portland with D.H. Stearns. As president, Pittock tasked his company manager, Stearns, with creating the colony and launching the Columbia River Paper Company. Two years later, the mill produced its first newsprint.

The town’s name didn’t stick, but the paper mill still remains. The post office decided that Lacamas was easily confused with La Center and La Connor, and dropped the “Frenchified” first two letters of its name. Soon after, the Legislature made the town officially Camas. In 1906, the town was incorporated. Five years later, despite changing hands, the mill’s payroll was $25,000 a month in wages (almost $785,000 today) split among 450 employees.

Pittock’s empire went beyond The Oregonian. It extended into real estate investments, holding land across the Pacific Northwest including whole city blocks. He built paper mills in Camas and Oregon City, Ore., in part to supply newsprint for Oregonian presses. He invested in railroads, a Portland bank, a sheep ranch and the lumber industry. These created his income in his later life, permitting his building of an elegant mansion on 46 acres in Portland’s West Hills.

Pittock’s marriage to Georgina Burton in 1860 produced four daughters and two sons. She died in 1918 and he followed a year later, a victim of the Spanish flu epidemic. A year later, his $7.89 million estate became the largest in Oregon history to be probated. An inventory of his Clark County holdings, which included the Leadbetter house in Camas, was required for the estate probate in Clark County.

After 140 years, the mill remains. Although Pittock’s mill passed through many hands, Georgia-Pacific acquired it in 2000. Along with the mill, Georgia-Pacific now owns the history of spills and leaks that left menacing soil and water contamination and must develop a plan to solve the problem.