Charles R. McCormick Lumber Company

With the Great Depression slow down, McCormick closed dock at San Diego in April 1931.

He had trouble raising the money to buy the company for cash, but the motivated sellers decided to finance the sale, taking mortgages on everything McCormick owned as security.

The deal included almost nothing as a down payment, but stipulated that the money Mr. McCormick HAD been able to raise toward the purchase must be spent on upgrading the existing facilities.

This operation was managed out of Camp Talbot, located beside Crocker Lake, south of Port Discovery.

McCormick also acquired a logging railroad and timberland near Castle Rock, Washington, which operated out of Camp Cowlitz.

McCormick resorted to harvesting the timber on his land at unsustainable rates, trying to try to increase the company's cashflow enough to cover the annual payments to the Pope and Talbot principals.

He soon ran low on timber, and when he wasn't able to do any more, in 1938 the Pope and Talbot families foreclosed on the mortgages, forcing McCormick into bankruptcy.

The P&T families bought the rest of McCormick's assets from the bankruptcy sale, reorganized the company as Pope & Talbot, and quickly resumed operations.