Mill workers union to continue

Published 12:42 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

SNOQUALMIE – Like many of the buildings on Railroad Avenue in Snoqualmie, the union hall has many stories and a long history.

It has been used as a movie theater, a library, a fire station and at one time it even had a jail out back.

The latest and longest lasting legacy has been serving as home to the Lumber & Sawmill Workers Local 1845 labor union. That legacy, however, supported the work of Weyerhaeuser employees and with the timber company closing down its Snoqualmie mill last month, the long-term future of the labor union and its historical hall is uncertain.

“There have been a lot of discussions in this hall,” said Charles Peterson, former president of the union and ex-mayor of Snoqualmie.

Lumber & Sawmill Workers Local 1845, often called just “Local 1845,” had its beginning in the loose knit labor organizations that formed at the mills during World War I. The organizations had no real structure until the 1930s, when much of the U.S. labor force started to unionize. In May of 1935, Local 1845 wrote its charter.

“It is the oldest, continual operating timber workers union in the state of Washington,” Peterson said.

The first meetings of the union took place in the building that now houses Flying Frog Antiques & Collectables. It moved to its present location on Railroad Avenue after the city built a fire station on River Street in 1956. The union bought the hall after the fire station moved out and one of Peterson’s first tasks as a newly minted Weyerhaeuser employee and union member was to help demolish the old prison behind the building.

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