Pacific Lumber Company
On July 29, 2008, the "Final Order" from US Bankruptcy attorney, Judge Richard Schmidt, led to the transfer of the assets of the bankrupt PALCO and all its subsidiaries to the Mendocino Redwood Company and the town of Scotia to Marathon Structured Finance.
[2] The company itself was a tourist attraction that once welcomed visitors for a tour of the (now permanently closed) largest Redwood Mill ever constructed, which included an unusual hydraulic debarker.
Over the ensuing 20 years they added more partners and began significant logging by 1882, at the present main site and town, which was originally known as Forestville.
By this time the town name was changed to Scotia and it boasted a Western Union telegraph station, church, post office, and school.
Images reflect everyday life and hardships, local residents and homes, vacations, trips into the surrounding forest, and Pacific Lumber Company’s mill and work operations, between the years of 1908 and 1913.
Beginning in the same decade, company management began participating in the preservation movement, primarily as a result of pressure from the Save the Redwoods League in San Francisco.
[9] By the 1950s, PALCO efforts to make Scotia a comfortable place to live and raise a family provided the following in the company town: affordable employee housing, stores, a school, a hospital, a skating rink, and a theatre.
[10][11] By the 1980s, this huge lumber operation had absolutely no debt, holding a partially diversified portfolio that included a high-rise building in San Francisco and lucrative welding operation in the San Francisco Bay Area, all derived from the company's 100-year-plan based on sustained yield directed cutting and profits carefully spent to protect cash flow.
These long-term plans consequently and purposely led to a relatively low profit annually, which unwittingly were about to make the company vulnerable to "new" acquisition practices from Wall Street.
[13] On February 26, 1986, the day after the completed takeover, Warren Murphy resigned, turning over the company to John A. Campbell, a man who had been one of his executive vice presidents.
[14] Between a desire to turn a higher profit and the need to start paying off the debt incurred from acquiring Pacific Lumber, Hurwitz's Maxxam replaced the sustainable growth policy of the previous owner-managers (primarily the Murphy family) with one of clearcutting.
Oakland police and the FBI initially accused Bari and Cherney with transporting an explosive device under the driver's seat of her own car; but Alameda County prosecutors dropped the case for lack of evidence a few months later.
[19] On a videotape supplied by Earth First!, Arlington Earl Ammons, the 52-year-old logger responsible for felling the tree that caused Chain's death can be heard shouting expletives and threatening the protesters.
On June 6, 2008 the judge preliminarily decided to confirm the Mendocino Redwood Company option for reorganization and signed the order on July 8, 2008.
Timber note holders stated that this will mean the Mendocino Redwood Company/ Marathon plan will be able to go forward, and many agree that any future court will be unlikely to undo it.
The railway was completed across the Scotia Bluffs to Alton, California on 20 August 1885 where connection was made with the Eel River and Eureka Railroad for the remainder of the distance to Humboldt Bay.
In 1999 PALCO agreed to American activist Julia Butterfly Hill's requests to create a 3-acre (12,000 m2) buffer zone around a 600-year old-growth redwood named Luna in exchange for leaving the tree, as she had been living in it for just over two years.
[citation needed] In 2003, the Company was sued civilly, by the District Attorney of Humboldt County, for fraud and violations of the California Business and Professions Code.
The suit was predicated on the allegation that PALCO had affirmatively represented that its timber operations would have a similar environmental impact across all of its land holdings, when in fact there were wide variances and effects on differing watershed environments.
