Merritt Price Sawmill in Actinolite c
1935 story from info by Stewart Roy.
We bought the property at
108817 Hwy 7 in 1994 from the Price family. It is on the north side
of 7, east of the Log Cabin Restaurant, west of Flinton Rd. Just
north of the highway in the edge of forest was a series of concrete
footings with iron pins sticking out, a large, rusty metal tank,
lengths of iron pipe, a wood braced sump hole, and various other bits
of metal and debris scattered about. Various other lengths of water
pipe can be found all the way down to the river. The ruin remained a
mystery until Andy Roy brought his father Stewart Roy over around
1996 or 97 and told this story.
Stewart identified the site as
Merritt Price's original sawmill and Stewart worked for Merritt at
that sawmill in about 1935 at the age of about 16. Stewart described
it as steam powered, cast iron sawmill and that there was a large
spoked cast iron fly wheel. Water was pumped up out of the
Skootamatta to supply the mill. The area to the north was cleared and
was used for storage of both logs and cut boards. Horses and wagons
were stored in the building next door to the Log Cabin (later the
Sunpower store, since burned) with wagons on the upper level and
horses in the basement. At the end of the day, the steam was shut off
to the saw and, Stewart said, with the flywheel, took quite a while
for saw to stop. Stewart said employees were being paid and expected
to work till saw came to a complete stop. Stewart said, one day, in a
fit of rage over what Merritt considered under productive work,
Merritt cut the spokes of the flywheel, effectively removing the
flywheel, so the saw would start and stop faster thus saving Merritt
wages.
When we bought the property, there were clearly two
paths from the Sunpower building, one to the sawmill and one to the
storage yard behind. Both paths still exist and we use both of
them.
My understanding is the sawmill closed sometime after
1935 with Merritt planning another one further west. Merritt got as
far as building a water dam on the Skootamatta but another sawmill
never happened. That dam is still in place behind the Unconventional
Moose.
Another interesting anecdote is a diving friend says
there is a large piece of machinery sitting on the bottom of the
Skootamatta just west of the small island at the picnic area on the
north side of 7. It is my belief that this could be the steam powered
saw, lost when being moved to the new sawmill site.
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