Mill Town's Ghost

Day 14: Once upon a time and not so long ago, Eatonville was a thriving mill town. Nestled in the heart of logging country, timber was brought in by truck and shipped out to Tacoma by rail as finished lumber. There was a lot of economic rivalry between mills in those days, and eventually Eatonville's yards and old sawdust burner were shut down as their competitors gained a foothold.

As a child travelling with my family from eastern Washington, we sometimes went past the sawdust burner at night. It was always aglow with the fires within, and sparks often flew above the wire mesh cap which was designed to prevent them from escaping. In a way, the sawdust burner was a somewhat sinister figure on the landscape, the type of "monster" which frightens small children, although in a delicious way. Even though I frequently fell asleep in the car on the way home, I would always try to stay awake to see it and its counterpart at National.

I do not recall when the mill shut down because we moved to the west side of the Cascades when I was still quite young. By the time I was an adult, the burner was standing cold, surrounded by a few relics of buildings associated with the mill. It was still standing when I moved into my present home, but it was all too obviously on the verge of collapse, holes in the mesh cap and sheet-metal panels peeling away from the sides.

It's been a few years now since a windstorm polished it off for once and all, but on the side of the town's motel, it is commemorated in a mural. To create this image, I first photographed the mural, then sneaked in past the "No Trespassing" signs until I could set up the tripod to obtain the same point of view. Using the mural as a PaintShopPro texture, I overlaid the modern-day photo with the outlines of the mill town in its heyday, my old pal the Sawdust Burner rising like a ghost from the spot where it once stood.