Most people know that the Boeing Company, one of the world’s leading aerospace corporations, got its start in Seattle. But what fewer people know is that its founder, William Boeing, got his own start as a Grays Harbor timber baron.
Boeing Inherited Grays Harbor Timberland
Born in Detroit in 1881, William was the eldest child of Wilhelm (1846-1889) and Marie (1862-1910) Boeing. His father had immigrated from Germany, changed his last name from Böing to Boeing, and made a fortune in the timber industry. His holdings included timberlands on Grays Harbor. His first purchase there, 6,000 acres, was made in 1887.
Wilhelm died of the flu. Daughter Margaret died two years later. Devastated, Marie sent William and his sister Caroline off to boarding school, first in Switzerland and later in Boston. It was a lonely childhood by all accounts.
Boeing enrolled in Yale as conflict started brewing over his father’s vast estate. In spring 1902, he discovered that his Grays Harbor holdings – now 25,000 acres – were years behind in property taxes and could be put up for auction. Turning 21 on October 1, he wasted no time in discharging his guardianship and taking control of his million-dollar inheritance in timber and mining lands. He also dropped out of Yale.
William Boeing Moves to Hoquiam
In summer 1903, Boeing arrived in Hoquiam to see his holdings for himself. Arriving by steamship on a gray, damp day, the Gilded Age high-society aristocrat was not initially impressed by the rough milltown. “I did not enthuse much about this country,” he later wrote.
But Boeing was here to stay. As David Williams explains in “The William Boeing Story,” Grays Harbor “offered Bill something that he could never find at Yale or Tiverton: a chance to be his own man, to be judged on what he could accomplish on his own, not on where he had gone to school or who his father was. It must have been refreshing to a young man eager to make a name for himself.”
Renting a room in a boarding house at 616 West 6th Street, Boeing set to work expanding his timber empire. He cruised his forests himself, examining his holdings, and stayed in logging camps with his workers.
In December 1906, Boeing partnered with Canadian immigrant Daniel “Dan” McCrimmon to form the Boeing & McCrimmon Logging Company. The company began logging right away.
Their camp closed for the season on June 15, 1907. Reopening was delayed by the failure of a splash dam on the Wishkah River in July. The dam allowed logs to be more easily transported downriver to sawmills. When the Boeing & McCrimmon camp reopened in September, it employed around 60 men.
Boeing continued to grow his timberland holdings in Grays Harbor. He made another fortune selling timber to help rebuild San Fransico after its devastating earthquake and fire in 1906.
Boeing in Hoquiam
While Boeing never put down roots in Hoquiam, life in Washington was starting to grow on him. “I’m fond of it now,” he wrote later, “and wouldn’t consider leaving.” Only renting in Hoquiam, he traveled frequently on business and back home to Virginia. On one of those visits, the Aberdeen Herald noted on July 22, 1907 that “he brought out a handsome automobile.”
The wealthy businessman also began investing in other local businesses. Boeing became a stockholder in the Harbor Packing Company and was manager of the Wishkah Boom Company. He bought an iron mining claim along Mox Chehalis Creek five miles east of Elma in 1905. He also invested in the Jefferson Oil Company, which tried unsuccessfully to drill for oil on the Hoh River.
Boeing also enjoyed boating. He had a Hoquiam shipyard construct the Widgeon, a 40-horsepower trunk cabin cruiser. The shipyard was decked out in lights for its July 1907 launch. Boeing hosted a dinner and dance for his friends at the New York Hotel afterward.
Boeing:Taking Flight in Seattle
Boeing & McCrimmon dissolved in January 1908 when McCrimmon left for California. Boeing reformed the company as Greenwood Timber Company, after the community where his mother’s Tiverton estate was located in Virginia.
Boeing moved to Seattle that same year. The city offered the urban life he’d been missing and easy access to the woods where he’d made a name for himself.
In December 1908 Boeing bought 117 million board feet of timber on the west branch of the Wishkah River for $450,000. The deal was celebrated as one of the largest in Southwest Washington history.
He continued to visit Grays Harbor frequently on business, which thrived despite bad wildfires in 1910 and a series of lawsuits. He also anchored his yacht at the Eighth Street Dock in Hoquiam on his way up to Alaska on vacation in 1912.
Logging and land deals continued even as he started to experiment with a new passion: airplanes. Boeing became a pilot and turned a Seattle boatyard into an airplane factory. He founded what became the Boeing Company in 1916.
The enterprise grew in leaps and bounds during the 1920s. Boeing, by then married with children, left Boeing Company in 1934.
Boeing and Grays Harbor
During World War II Boeing operated a branch plant in Aberdeen that made B-29 parts for assembly in Seattle.
The Boeing Company has grown to become one of the world’s leading aerospace corporations. But this growth would not have been possible if William Boeing, who died in 1956, had not been able to make his start as a Grays Harbor timber baron.
