In partnership with his brother and three other stakeholders, Truman Doud Collins, known as T.D. or “Teddy,” purchases a steam mill and 1,480 acres of timber at Turkey Run near Whig Hill, Pennsylvania. The five partners made a $3,000 down payment, with a mortgage of $17,000. They paid the loan off in three years.
Teddy and his brother, J.V. Collins, buy out the other three partners of the Turkey Run location. The brothers, along with Sanford S. Holborrk, also owned a sawmill, grist mill, and store in Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania.
Everell Stanton (E.S.) Collins, Teddy’s son, extends the family business to the West Coast with a sawmill in Ostrander, Washington. Within 13 years, E.S. owned the Ostrander Railway and Timber Company, the Silver Lake Railway and Lumber Company, and was elected to the Washington State Legislature.
Teddy Collins passes away, leaving behind ownership (along with his partners) of 7 sawmills in the Tionesta Valley. He had ownership in the Clough Lands in PA; timberland in Tehama and Plumas Counties, CA; timberland and mills in WA; and timber in OR. He owned over 100 mi. of logging railroad, 41 mi. of main line, 25 locomotives, and oil interests.
E.S. and partner, J.T. McDonald, form the J.T. McDonald Logging Company, the beginning of the Collins presence in the truck logging business. E.S.’s son, Truman W. Collins, becomes a well-known, vocal proponent of truck logging as a way to practice sustainable forestry.
E.S. Collins passes away. Truman W. Collins creates a sustainable logging operation on the 67,800 acre Curtis, Collins & Holbrook Company lands in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Collins begins a commitment to sustainable forestry. Truman starts the Chester, California mill in 1941.
Elmer Raymond Goudy, husband of Grace Collins and son-in-law of Truman W. Collins, steps in to help run operations after Truman is commissioned as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve.
A group of investors, including Truman W. Collins, buys the Lakeview Lumber Company. In 1945, the Freemont Sawmill is added, now named the Collins Lakeview Sawmill.
The Collins flakeboard plant opened in Chester, California in 1961.
Truman W. Collins passes away, leaving his wife Maribeth, three children (Tim, Terry, and Cheri), and the yet-to-be-born Truman Wesley Collins, Jr. Elmer Raymond Goudy becomes president of Collins Pine Company.
Maribeth Wilson Collins begins her service as president of The Collins Foundation, helping to direct the foundation’s philanthropic giving in support of the quality of life and well-being for people in communities across Oregon. Photo September 2000.
Maribeth Wilson Collins becomes chair of the board of Collins Pine Company. She held this position for 31 years, until 2005, and remained a board member after that. Photo circa 2007.
Alan Goudy, son of Elmer Goudy, grandson of E.S. Collins, and nephew of Truman W. Collins, becomes president of Collins Pine Company.
The Kane Hardwood mill was constructed in 1973 and opened in 1974.
Robert James Lastofka becomes the first person outside the Collins family to become president of Collins. The family remains deeply ingrained in the company’s management and operations.
Jim Quinn is named president of Collins Pine Company.
Collins Almanor Forest receives FSC® certification.
Collins Pennsylvania Forest receives FSC® certification.
Collins purchases the Klamath Falls mill from Weyerhaeuser.
Collins Lakeview Forest receives FSC® certification.
Eric Schooler named president and CEO of Collins.
Maribeth Wilson Collins passed away on October 4, 2017, just short of her 99th birthday. Maribeth was the widow of Truman W. Collins for 53 years. She remained true to the vision and values of her husband, a pioneer in sustainable forest management, and was a moral influence in maintaining those values throughout her life.
Tom Insko named president and CEO of Collins.
Tramways were wooden railed tracks laid in the forest. Teams of horses or mules pulled logs on wheeled carts along the rails. In May of 1887 at Fox Creek, Teddy Collins replaced his horses and mules with a 13-ton Shay locomotive. Cars were loaded by hand and then sent to coast down the tramways by gravity, with only a brakeman to keep them under control. Logs sometimes made it to the creek and sometimes didn’t. Luckily, trams soon were part of the past, replaced by rails stretching between logging camps.
Teddy Collins moved his family to Nebraska, PA in 1882, and the community became the center of Teddy’s operations for the remainder of his life. He built a house there, finished in 1884, and in 1904 when it burned to the ground, Teddy had an exact replica built to replace it. His full-time employees had company homes (rent was around $3 a month) and the town had oil and gas wells drilled at Fox Creek to pipe downhill to the town. This system worked well, except for days when the pressure became too much and blew the lids off the cook stoves. Teddy built a Nebraska Methodist Episcopal church, a park, and sidewalks in the main part of town. The company store carried fabrics, boots, canned and fresh food, chewing tobacco, and pails full of candy. Upon request, a horse-drawn delivery wagon delivered purchases to the homes of customers.
It is impossible to create a full list of the contributions E.S. Collins gave to educational, charitable, and religious institutions, because so many were given out of public view. Some known gifts are: an endowment of $100,000 to Willamette University; a research fellowship in food chemistry at the University of Oregon medical school; land in Green Township, Forest County, Pennsylvania for a public park in commemoration of his father; and 60% of the net proceeds from the timberlands in Pennsylvania and California were given to the Board of Foreign Missions. When the gifts were given to Willamette and to the Board of Foreign Missions, it was with the provision that there be absolutely no publicity.
In 1992, Wade Mosby, Collins VP of Marketing, researched forest certification and found a California company, Scientific Certification Systems (SCS), to provide a rigorous, independent study of the company’s forest management practices. Collins would be the first privately-owned forest products company in the United States to be certified through such a reputable means. SCS started their evaluation of the Collins Almanor Forest in the summer of 1992, and issued the results in March of 1993. The scores were such that the SCS evaluation team expected them to serve as a standard of excellence for other owners of North American mixed conifer timberland and the forests were endorsed by the Forest Stewardship Council®. The certification verifies the Collins Almanor Forest is managed to the highest environmental, social and economic standards.
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