Eveleth Lumber Company (site)

Built to support the Reno Mill & Lumber Company in 1902

Reno Mill & Lumber Company Close proximity to the railroad tracks was a key factor in the location of the Reno Mill & Lumber Company's Reno headquarters. The property was sold to the Verdi Lumber Company in 1913 and later became known as Eveleth Lumber. Source: Nevada Historical Society

Lumber was big business throughout the Tahoe basin from the time of the Comstock, when thousands of acres of Sierra forest were cut down to construct underground support systems for the mines as well as the towns they founded. Numerous lumber companies had logging operations and band mills in the mountains, with planing mills and storage yards in the valleys below.

By 1900, the Reno Mill & Lumber Company, founded in 1889, needed more room and better facilities for its growing business. Moving just a few blocks east of its original location, the company constructed a planing mill and sash and door factory at this site. Spur tracks ran from both the Central Pacific and NCO Railroads into the expansive yards, which could store over a million feet of lumber at a time. Carloads arrived daily from the band mill near Beckwith, where the company owned several thousands of acres of pine.

In 1902 the company completed a large fireproof brick building where the lumber was finished and manufactured into sashes, door frames, and other building supplies that were both sold locally and shipped out of town by rail. At the time, the company was one of the city’s largest employers, with between 90 and 100 men on the payroll—around 50 in town, and the rest at the band mill on the Sierra Valleys Railroad.

The property was sold to the Verdi Lumber Company in 1913 to serve as their sash and door factory. By the late 1920s, the company was foundering, following the burning of its Verdi sawmill, storage yard and roundhouse, as well as the depletion of its timber stands. In 1928, A.T. Eveleth, a former purchasing agent for the Verdi Lumber Company, bought its mill and lumber yard and founded the Eveleth Lumber Company, which operated for over 50 years. With much of its original machinery intact, the 1902 building, along with the wood-frame structure once used for administration and retail, served for many years as storage for Ray’s Tire Exchange. Both structures burned down in 2023.

Audio

A variety of jobs Interviewed in 2013, Norm Avansino discusses the types of employees and the work they did at Eveleth Lumber, where he worked for 25 years. Source: University of Nevada Oral History Program Date: 2013

Arrested decay Interviewed in 2012 by Alicia Barber, Cindy Ainsworth, a founder of the Historic Reno Preservation Society, recalls her reaction upon first viewing the intact condition of equipment inside the Eveleth Lumber mill building. Source: University of Nevada Oral History Program Creator: Alicia Barber Date: 2012