When Money Grew on Trees: A. B. Hammond and the Age of the Timber Baron

by Greg Gordon

Overview

Born in the timber colony of New Brunswick, Maine, in 1848, Andrew Benoni Hammond got off to an inauspicious start as a teenage lumberjack. By his death in 1934, Hammond had built an empire of wood that stretched from Puget Sound to Arizona—and in the process had reshaped the American West and the nation’s way of doing business. When Money Grew on Trees follows Hammond from the rough-and-tumble world of mid-nineteenth-century New Brunswick to frontier Montana and the forests of Northern California—from lowly lumberjack to unrivaled timber baron.

Although he began his career as a pioneer entrepreneur, Hammond, unlike many of his associates, successfully negotiated the transition to corporate businessman. Against the backdrop of western expansion and nation-building, his life dramatically demonstrates how individuals—more than the impersonal forces of political economy—shaped capitalism in this country, and in doing so, transformed the forests of the West from functioning natural ecosystems into industrial landscapes. In revealing Hammond’s instrumental role in converting the nation’s public domain into private wealth, historian Greg Gordon also shows how the struggle over natural resources gave rise to the two most pervasive forces in modern American life: the federal government and the modern corporation.

Combining environmental, labor, and business history with biography, When Money Grew on Trees challenges the conventional view that the development and exploitation of the western United States was dictated from the East Coast. The West, Gordon suggests, was perfectly capable of exploiting itself, and in his book we see how Hammond and other regional entrepreneurs dammed rivers, logged forests, and leveled mountains in just a few decades. Hammond and his like also built cities, towns, and a vast transportation network of steamships and railroads to export natural resources and import manufactured goods. In short, they established much of the modern American state and economy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806192000
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	03/07/2023
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	500
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.24(d)

About the Author

Greg Gordon, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, is the author of Landscape of Desire: Identity and Nature in Utah’s Canyon Country.

Read an Excerpt

When Money Grew on Trees

A. B. Hammond and the Age of the Timber Baron

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By Greg Gordon

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS

Copyright © 2014 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4547-1

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CHAPTER 1

Standing at the Crossroads

For as long as any of them could remember, Indian tribes living west of the northern Rocky Mountains had traveled the "road to buffalo" by following the Clark Fork River to the Continental Divide and over to the vast hunting grounds of the upper Missouri River. For an equally long time, Great Plains Indians had resented this intrusion, and the battle over resources seesawed back and forth. At the eastern end of a broad valley, in what would become western Montana, twin promontories pinched the Clark Fork into a narrow canyon. On more than one occasion, the Blackfeet, who inhabited the buffalo country, ambushed the mountain-dwelling Salish at this point to prevent their passage on the road to buffalo. The bones and skulls littering the site caused French trappers to call the canyon La Port d'Enfer (the gate of hell). English-speaking fur traders then applied the name Hell's Gate Ronde to the wide valley that emerged from the canyon's mouth.

Twelve thousand years earlier, Hell's Gate Ronde lay beneath two thousand feet of water as the immense Glacial Lake Missoula spread two hundred miles to the west, making it larger than Lake Erie and Ontario combined. When the ice dam holding back the water broke, the lake emptied in forty-eight hours, and the ensuing flood, at ten times the combined flow of all the world's rivers, scoured the Columbia River Basin. The lake left behind a wide, flat, fertile valley surrounded by rolling hills. The hills yielded to forested mountains and ridges, behind which rose sharp, treeless peaks. Entering through Hellgate Canyon, the Clark Fork River meandered across the valley floor to merge with the Bitterroot River flowing from the south. The Bitterroot, in turn, followed a long, narrow valley nestled between two parallel mountain ranges. Sheltered from the snow and cold, these low-elevation bottomlands provided early spring grass for horses and abundant bitterroots, a dietary staple, and formed an ideal wintering ground for the Salish.

White travelers also found the valley amenable. On their westward journey in 1805, Lewis and Clark rested their men and horses near the banks of the Bitterroot River before tackling the perilous crossing of the Bitterroot Mountains. The following year, they greatly simplified their return by following the road to the buffalo back to the Missouri River country. Half a century later Lt. John Mullan attempted to link the Missouri and Columbia watersheds by building a military road from Walla Walla, Washington, to Fort Benton on the Missouri River. For much of the route, Mullan simply followed the incised travois ruts of well-established Indian roads leading from the Columbia Plateau, along the Clark Fork, through Hell's Gate, and on to the Great Plains. By the 1860s traders recognized the geographical and economic advantages of establishing posts on these Indian thoroughfares, and the town of Missoula, Montana, slowly began to grow at the crossroads of the Mullan Road and the Salish trail up the Bitterroot Valley.

One day in mid-October 1891, the trajectories of two men's lives intersected at that crossroads, which had become Higgins Avenue and Front Street, the heart of a now booming city. The first man, Andrew B. Hammond, was dressed in well-fitted suit with wide lapels, a four-in-hand tie, and a stylish bowler. The chill air exacerbated his rheumatism, and he walked with a slight limp. At forty-two, he was a thin, handsome man with sharp features and a close-cropped beard that was just beginning to grey. As a frontier capitalist, Hammond's star was ascending; in another ten years he would be one of the premier lumbermen on the West Coast. Riding the wave of American industrialization, Hammond accumulated undreamed-of wealth and power.

Industrialization, however, did not result in universal prosperity. In contrast to Hammond, Charlo, hereditary chief of the Flathead Salish, was sliding deeper into poverty and alienation. Nevertheless, on this day, proudly astride his horse, Charlo sported buckskin leggings, a beaded sash over one shoulder with bracelets and anklets to match, a wool jacket over a red vest, and his signature plug hat. In contrast to the wealthy Hammond, Chief Charlo was destitute, despondent over the loss of territory, and desperately trying to keep his people from starvation.

Not only did Charlo's and Hammond's individual paths cross on this day—so did the cultures, economies, and eras that each inhabited. The Missoula and Bitterroot Valleys were a microcosm of the profound and cataclysmic changes that occurred throughout western North America at the close of the nineteenth century. In a single decade the arrival of the railroad, the conversion of forests into lumber, the rise of agricultural production, and pervasive mining activity transformed the landscape and marginalized the people whose ancestors inhabited it for thousands of years. In most of North America, this transformation required decades, even centuries. Montana's geographic and economic isolation until late in the nineteenth century compressed this into just a few years. The transcontinental railroad, for example, did not arrive until 1883, the same year as the last bison hunt. Emblematic of this condensed process, the events of October 16, 1891, provide a vivid snapshot. Differing only in particulars, the stories of Hammond and Charlo played out throughout the American West.

Standing at the intersection of Higgins and Front, Hammond could survey his domain, which included the four largest buildings in town. Each anchored a corner of the bustling intersection and formed the nucleus of his empire. Hammond, no doubt, felt pride and a sense of accomplishment. While the unique geography of Hell's Gate Ronde—a low-elevation valley bisected by two rivers and blessed with rich topsoil and timber—was the major factor in the establishment of Missoula, the city's economic growth as a mercantile, railroad, lumbering center, and regional hub was largely due to the business activities of A. B. Hammond.

When Hammond arrived in 1870, Missoula was just another frontier trading post consisting of a smattering of log cabins strung out along the muddy Mullan Road. Now, two decades later, it was a thriving city of five thousand and the focal point of the region's economic and political life. As the town's most successful businessman and one of Montana's wealthiest individuals, Hammond was responsible for much of the change. His political and economic influence extended throughout northern Idaho and western Montana and even to the nation's capital. Although Hammond's name would eventually be purged from Missoula's history, in 1891 it was familiar in every corner of the valley, though rarely uttered with reverence. While many acknowledged his business acumen, his ruthless practices and brusque manner won him few friends. In the 1889 election for town council he received one vote.

Securing the southeast corner of Higgins and Front, the First National Bank was the city's architectural masterpiece, and as bank president, Hammond had overseen its construction the previous year. Built in a classical Queen Anne style, rough-hewn granite framed the entryway of the imposing four-story edifice. Heavy wooden doors opened into a circular foyer that rose into a turret, ninety-six feet high, that towered above all else in town.

Across the street, even newer and nearly as ornate, the Hammond Building also stood four stories high and had a castle-like rampart running the perimeter of the roofline. Minarets sprouted from each end of the rampart, while a turret rose from the corner. West on Front Street, past the Hammond Building, were the Mascot Theater, wood-frame saloons, gambling houses, and Chinese laundries; farther on were the euphemistically termed "female boarding houses."

On the northwest corner sat Missoula's largest and most luxurious hotel, which boasted steam heat and electric lights powered by its own power plant in the basement. Part of Missoula's recent building boom, the Florence Hotel (named after Hammond's wife) had opened three years earlier. Even at three to four dollars per night, the Florence's two hundred rooms were nearly always full with land speculators, railroad executives, shoppers, merchants, masons, and investors from Helena, Butte, New York, and London.

Although dwarfed by the other buildings in height, Hammond's Missoula Mercantile Company (MMC) spread over an entire block on the northeast corner. Scores of windows lined the recently added second story of the largest department store between St. Paul, Minnesota and Portland, Oregon. Shaded by red-and-white awnings over the wooden sidewalks, a passerby could examine the merchandise displayed behind the large, plate glass windows. Inside, shoppers could purchase clothing, hats, cloth, canned goods, fresh fruit and vegetables, furniture, carpets, saddles, drugs, farm implements, hardware, guns, saddles, shoes, and even carriages and wagons. While less impressive than Hammond's other buildings, the Merc, as it was known, served as the hub of the valley's activity. With branch stores across western Montana, the MMC dominated the region's commerce in both retail and wholesale markets. The grocery department alone accounted for one million dollars in annual sales. For the previous ten years, the company had been Missoula County's largest employer.

From this one corner, Hammond's power and influence radiated into the region's five valleys. Branch stores dotted the Flathead Valley to the north and the Bitterroot Valley to the south. His timber operations extended far up the Blackfoot to the northeast, as well as east and west along the Clark Fork River. In addition to the bank, the Florence Hotel, the MMC, and real estate development, Hammond's massive sawmill on the Blackfoot River dominated the region's lumber industry. He also controlled the Missoula Street Railway and the power and water company. Little wonder that Harrison Spaulding, editor of the Weekly Missoulian, portrayed Hammond as the "Missoula Octopus, that is undertaking to reach its slimy arms over the county and strangle the life out of it." Nevertheless, in large part due to Hammond's commercial activities, the population of Missoula County, including the Bitterroot Valley, exploded from 2,554 in 1880 to 14,427 ten years later, excluding Indians. And none felt this pressure more than those who were excluded from the census.

Indians felt the settlement pressure most intently in the Bitterroot Valley, where Hammond had punched in a spur line in 1888 to connect with the Northern Pacific Railroad and integrate the valley into the national economy. Cattle, wool, wheat, ore, and lumber could now be shipped profitably to markets in the Midwest, and Hammond began developing the valley, buying, subdividing, and platting town sites. Not only did the railroad encourage more settlement, but it profoundly changed the character of the valley. Cattle and sheep replaced elk and deer. The clear, flowing river was now choked with sediment and sawdust from Hammond's logging and milling operations. Loggers and miners swarmed over the forests and mountains, felling trees and evacuating earth. Where hundreds of teepees once stood, houses, stores, and barns dotted the valley. The incessant chugging and rattling of the Bitterroot Valley Railroad was never far from earshot, and telegraph poles punctuated the landscape. Only a short train ride from Missoula, farmers could now send their wheat to Hammond's mills near the city, and ore could be shipped from Hammond's Curlew copper mine. But the primary cargo was timber.

Blocked from the winter snow by the mountains and blessed with good soil and abundant water, the valley had become a paradise for settlers, supporting vegetable gardens, orchards, and wheat and dairy farms. One farm in the Bitterroot boasted fifty thousand fruit trees with fifty varieties of apples, as well as plums, cherries, strawberries, and raspberries. Nearly all this produce funneled into Missoula to feed the rapidly growing city and was shipped to Butte and other mining centers too high and cold to support agriculture. The settlers built houses, stables, and stockyards. They fenced, irrigated, and grazed thousands of sheep, all on lands that the U.S. government had granted to the Salish Indians in the Hell Gate Treaty of 1855.

For twenty years Chief Charlo had clung to this treaty, even as white settlers pouring into the fertile valley made it increasingly anachronistic. Feeling constricted by Indian tenure, in 1871 settlers petitioned President Ulysses S. Grant to have the Salish removed to the Flathead Reservation in the Jocko Valley. Opposing the move, Charlo produced a copy of the original 1855 treaty—owned by his father, Victor, one of the signatories—as evidence of his claim that the Bitterroot Valley was his birthright. Nonetheless, Grant authorized the settlers' request, and the next year Congress appointed James Garfield to carry out the removal.

After visiting both the Jocko and Bitterroot Valleys, Garfield submitted an agreement to Charlo, Arlee, and Adolph, the three Salish chiefs. Arlee and Adolph consented to the arrangement, and they moved their bands to the Jocko, sixty-five miles north, in exchange for $50,000. Charlo, however, repeatedly stated that he would kill himself rather than sign. Yet when Garfield published the contract, he put Charlo's name first as primary chief and signed it with an X. The future president would later confess the forgery, saying he thought he was acting in the Indians' best interest.

Incensed at the government's treachery, Charlo became intransigent, repeatedly insisting that he never signed the document. But believing Charlo's band would soon vacate, white immigrants flooded into the valley following publication of the agreement. In 1883 the secretary of interior opened unoccupied land in the Bitterroot to homesteading, but still Charlo refused to budge. While Charlo held out, his people suffered. "The Indians became listless, indolent, shiftless. They traded their grain and few furs for groceries, calicoes and blankets, but their dependent conditions and doubt as to the future was driving their young men to the saloons, demoralization and ruin," wrote General Henry Carrington, the aging Indian fighter who had been called up from retirement to oversee the ejection of Charlo's band. "Removal of the Indians from the Valley had become equally necessary for all its inhabitants," he concluded.

By 1889, the lure of money for their individual allotments and the notion that they would be reunited with the rest of the tribe induced several of Charlo's people to agree to the removal. Charlo, however, reiterated his position that he had never signed Garfield's agreement, at which point Carrington, in a brilliant stoke of diplomacy, produced the original document, which indeed indicated a blank space next to Charlo's name. Publicly vindicated, Charlo finally acquiesced, but the material condition of his people also factored greatly in his decision to relocate. Carrington noted that "many of the Indians were aged or lame, and supplies from the [Flathead] Reservation were absolutely insufficient to prevent great suffering and extreme want." Charlo acknowledged that the young Salish men often sold their game for alcohol and "followed the words of bad white men and stole what they wanted to eat without working for it." Anticipating the move to the Jocko, Charlo's band neglected to plant crops, and they slipped into poverty so dismal that they were reduced to hanging around butcher shops begging for entrails and scraps. Faced with the dilemma of whether to wait until their lands were sold or leave before winter set in, Charlo set aside his pride and agreed to move to the Flathead Reservation, north of Missoula.

Thus, on October 15, 1891, Charlo clutched an eagle feather in his right hand and bid farewell to his ancestral home with a large feast accompanied by singing, drumming, and dancing. Refusing to regard the relocation as a defeat, his followers saw it as cause for celebration since it would mean an end to starvation and hardship. Dressed in their finest, the Salish wore colorful blankets, feathers, necklaces, leggings, bone breastplates, and freshly painted faces. Early the next morning, they loaded all their belongings onto wagons and horses, rolled up their teepees, and lashed them to the long lodge poles the horses would drag. In high spirits, the Indians traveled down the valley past the orchards, the apple and plum trees turning crimson. "The great mass of horses, wagons and people melted into a column, more than a mile in length, but in breadth varying according to the eccentric activities of the hundreds of loose ponies that shared the exodus," wrote Carrington.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from When Money Grew on Trees by Greg Gordon. Copyright © 2014 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations,
Acknowledgments,
Note on Language,
Introduction,
1. Standing at the Crossroads,
2. War against the Pines,
3. The Woodhawk War,
4. To Hell's Gate and Back,
5. Working on the Railroad,
6. The Cramer Gulch War,
7. Sparks Lights a Fire,
8. A Political Animal,
9. Panic,
10. Montana's Pariah/Oregon's Messiah,
11. A. B. Hammond, Inc.,
12. The Oregon Land Frauds,
13. California Dreaming,
14. Assembling an Empire,
15. Oxen, Horses, and Donkeys,
16. The Great Strike of 1907,
17. Socialists and Progressives,
18. Class War and World War,
19. The Age of Consolidation and Cooperation,
Epitaph,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,