What was life like in towns where the boss owned everything?
Where you didn't have a job, a home and maybe not a place to eat if you didn't work for the company?
That's the question Linda Carlson tries to answer in a social history of company-owned towns and in her presentations on company-town life.
Company Towns of the Pacific Northwest includes Port Gamble, DuPont, the Seattle City Light villages, Roche Harbor and McMillin, Black Diamond and Carbonado, Ronald and Roslyn, Coulee Dam and Richland.
This book also tells about clay towns like Taylor and Clay City, and the towns built on timber: Valsetz, Kinzua, Kerriston, Brookings, Bordeaux, McCleary, McKenna, Shevlin, Ryderwood, Potlatch, Port Ludlow, Port Blakely, Alpine, Cherry Valley and so many more.
Carlson describes who lived in these towns, where they lived, where they ate and shopped, played, prayed and educated their children. She discusses why the towns were built, and why they died or were sold off.
If you're a railway history buff, you'll especially enjoy the chapter of the book on transportation, including the speeders and the little rail buses and other single-car trains that ran into company towns and other remote sites. (Below, a McKeen Motor Car, built by a subsidiary of Union Pacific. Several ran in Washington state.)
