File:Logging crew and flat car at bottom of inclined railroad track, Saginaw Timber Company, Elma, ca 1923 (KINSEY 514).jpeg

PH Coll 516.3105
The Saginaw Timber Company incorporated on March 18, 1908 and organized in 1909. The company was to be capitalized at $100,000. The organizers were A J Morley and W G Hopkins. The company constructed and operated a 40 mile logging railroad in the Aberdeen area. In 1919, the company merged the E H Lester Logging Company, a two mile logging railroad in the Montesano area. In 1933, the company merged the Gray's Harbor and Pacific Railroad Company, a 9.25 mile railroad in the Aberdeen area. The company also merged the Saginaw Southern Railway Company. By 1934 the company was known as the Saginaw Logging Company and operated in the Brooklyn area. In 1947, the company acquired the Bridges to Vesta track from the Gray's Harbor and Puget Sound Railway Company. In 1946, the company was reorganized as the Saginaw Lumber Company. On February 14, 1947 the company was dissolved.

Elma is a community on the Chehalis River twenty-seven miles west of Olympia in southeast Grays Harbor County. It was an once an important logging center and is now largely dependent on agriculture since the nearby Satsop Nuclear Power project was shut down. It was named for Miss Elma Austin, whose family settled in the vicinity before 1860. Two other name sources have been suggested. One is that the name is for Elmer E. Ellsworth, the first soldier to be killed in the Civil War, but with his given name shortened to the present form by post office officials. Another is that two residents of the town submitted the name Elmira when a post office was established, and that postal officials shortened the name to the present form because of another Almira in the state.

• Subjects (LCSH): Slash (Logging)--Washington (State)--Grays Harbor County
• Subjects (LCTGM): Loggers; Inclined planes--Washington (State); Railroad cars--Washington (State); Railroad tracks; Railroad ties--Washington (State); Cutover lands--Washington (State); Lumber industry--Washington (State); Saginaw Timber Company (Brooklyn, Wash.)--People--Washington (State); Saginaw Timber Company (Brooklyn, Wash.)--Equipment & supplies--Washington (State); Grays Harbor County (Wash.); Group portraits