These photos came to the Editor’s attention when a gentleman from the West Point area, Pat McGreevy, brought them to the museum on a CD. As it turns out, museum stalwart and daughter of Howard Blagen, Pat Blagen Bradley, had had a collection of photos that may have been in her dad’s stuff scanned professionally 10 years or so ago, and had gotten them to the Wilseyville people, and then forgotten about them. Our very great thanks to Pat M. for getting them back to us as they certainly should be on this site.
Click to enlarge any of these photos
Construction at the Sandy Gulch Mill Not sure what part of the mill is being built
Aerial view with sites numbered Unfortunately, we don’t have the key to tell us what the numbers refer to.
Vertical aerial view of Sandy Gulch operation
Howard Blagen at desk
Lawrence Wilsey and Howard Blagen
Duveen Meyers, probably the office manager
Howard Blagen and ??
Paul LaTeer in the middle. Lady to our right of him was Duveen Meyers and on our left of him was Opal Swanson
Opal Swanson, Paul LaTeer, and Duveen Meyers
Howard Blagen (same picture I think, little better quality)
Preparing the Sandy Gulch site
Dragline building road. The mill is already up and running, you can see the drying stacks in the background
The mill from the hill
The mill from the pond
Mill Pond at Sandy Gulch
Log ready to go down Brow Log to Pond
Dumping off the Brow Log
Splitting a log too big for the mill. Usually this was done with black powder or dynamite because it was so much quicker
D8 with Hyster arch. Howard Blagen enjoying the feel of the new equipment. Editor would guess that Howard would like to be running it.
Company pride in new equipment
Heel boom loader
See how the loader operator uses the “heel” to anchor one end of the log while the cables lift it without having to be in the center of the log.
We’ve been told more than a few times that Stockton Box did all the “bringing the logs to the mill” job. This photo shows that isn’t true, or at least not totally true. Did Stockton Box do all the logging, but Associated did their own hauling?
These are pretty much the guys who got things done. Names appear on the same photo below.
Fellow in back row, farthest left must be J.D. Conger, not Donger. There is a wonderful story elsewhere on this web site about J.D. and his beloved wife.
AFP bigwigs Bill Kuphalt 4th from right back row. Howard Blagen third from left front row. Vern Gardner of Stockton Box in own row on right.
AFP bigwigs. Bill Kuphalt 4th from left front row. Howard Blagen at head of table Charles Gray to Howard’s left.
1972 big wigs in Washington DC
Aerial view with Highway 26 at bottom
AFP bigwigs probably at Toyon
Howard Blagen on right
Leave a comment