Port Blakely Tree Farms

Port Blakely Tree Farms, our parent company in Seattle, Washington, had its beginnings in 1864 when the colourful historic sea captain from Nova Scotia, Captain Renton, opened his sawmill on Bainbridge Island in the Puget Sound areas of Washington State.

This became the site of the Port Blakely Mill Company, once the worlds largest sawmill under one roof. During the early days, the company was involved in shipbuilding and the marketing and shipping of timber. During the time that the parent company, Port Blakely Mill Company, was shipping wood all over the world, many cargoes found their way to New Zealand.

The timber was used for mining timber in the Otago Gold Rush and many of the government buildings in both New Zealand and Australia were built with timber from Port Blakely.

Port Blakely was sold to the present owners, the Eddy Family, in 1903. When the sawmill burnt down in 1924, it was never re-built, but the company retained ownership of extensive timber holdings through Washington State where the principal species are Douglas Fir and Western Hemlock. Minimum rotation age of the North American Douglas Fir crop is sixty-five years, and Port Blakely's high quality, large diameter timber now fills a niche in the foreign market not met by other producers.

Investigations undertaken by the managers of Port Blakely to discover the best way to manage young forests went down many paths, James G. Eddy, one of the original owners, personally founded the Institute of Forest Genetics in Northern California in 1925. It was given to the government in 1935 and was recently renamed the Eddy Tree Breeding Station after its founder. Some of the early work done at the Forest Research Institute in Rotorua was based on the American Institute's early studies.

For more information please visit the Port Blakely website.