camptramp
Senior Member
I'll try to give you a brief run down of the San Jaun Valley at Port Renfrew B.C. logging started on the North side of the valley in 1923 with Cathels and Sorenson in 1933 Heemmingsen and Cameron took it over ,their logging camps were at Granite Cr. then Harris Cr.. On the south side of the San Jaun valley its my under standing the San Jaun Bay Lumber Co. was first to start logging in that area ,the Malahat Logging Co. began operations in the mid thrities and pushed the rail road up the valley and built their logging camp at Bear Cr.These outfits were rail road operations. In 1946 Britsh Columbia Forest Products was formed and purchased both the Hemmingsen Cameron and the Malahat holdings .Creating Renfrew Division. In the mid 1950's BCFP switched from rail road logging to truck logging .In the late 1950's to the early !960's BCFP shut down Bear Cr. then Harris Cr. camps and Built a new camp and Dryland Sort at the mouth of the Gordon R. and North Fork of the San Jaun R. In the 1970's Renfrew Div. started hauling logs over the passes between the San Jaun valley and Cowichan Lake to supplement the log supply for Youbou saw mill . The end of 1982 found us pulling out of Renfrew's DLS and hauling our logs to Honeymoon Bay DLS where they were sorted any logs not needed at Youbou were loaded on to highway trucks and hauled to Shoal Island DLS by Crofton to be boomed in salt water and sent to other mills. In and around 1988 or 89 BCFP was taken over by Fletcher Challenge after they picked through the assets of BCFP ,Renfrew Div. was combined with Caycuse Div.in the winter of 1991-92 creating Honeymoon Bay Operations (HBO) in 1992-93 Fletcher Challenge seperated the logging holdings from their pulp mills and called it Timberwest in 2004 Timberwest seperated their private lands from the crown lands in TFL 46 and sold the TFL to Teal Jones . Thats a basic over all view of what happened it was a Roller Coaster ride for crew the with every change more downs than ups.
