In parallel to a new Ballard restaurant opening this week calling itself “Shingletown,” our Throwback Thursday this week harkens back to the roots of Old Ballard’s milling nickname.
Ballard development was a slow ride in the late 1800s until railroad entrepreneurs Thomas Burke and Daniel Gilman– with the help of their project manager Captain William Ballard– assembled a large tract in 1888 for the construction of a new community.
However, not a full year later Seattle all but burned down in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. Ballard’s cedar sawmills helped supply materials to rebuild the city and for years after, Ballard dominated the shingle industry, earning it the nickname “Shingle Town USA.”
The following picture depicts the Stimson Mill in Ballard. After a mill called “Yesler’s” burned in the 1889 fire, the area’s timber industry moved north into Ballard. Ballard’s lumber mills provided hundreds of jobs, and the Stimson Mill was one of the town’s largest.
Top picture of an unknown lumber mill in Ballard (1900)/ Photo courtesy of Ballard Historical Society
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