Local Man Keeps the Past Alive at 75-Year-Old Family Mill

Before Starbucks, before —before Boeing even—timber was king in the Pacific Northwest.

The land was covered with trees—giant, towering trees—and people came from all over to log them. To make the job easier, they built sawmills where the trees were, then built towns around the mills and eventually transformed the wilds of yesteryear into the big cities and sprawling suburbs of today.

Most of those old logging towns have been swallowed up by progress, taking the small mills with them. One mill still stands as a reminder of the way life used to be in the Redmond area, though: the Isackson Sawmill.

It sits off 244th Avenue Northeast, near State Route 202, right across the Sammamish border in Redmond. 

The Isackson Sawmill first opened in 1936 when Henry Isackson bought it for what was supposed to be personal use.

“He wanted to cut him out enough lumber to build a fence and a barn,” said Henry’s son Duane, who lives up the hill on 244th in Sammamish. 

Locals began to flock to the mill as soon as it went up, though, asking Henry if he’d cut them out a piece of wood or plane a few boards for them. The mill became even busier during World War II when the region’s big mills were occupied with that effort.

Henry never did get around to his own projects, and what had been intended as a temporary operation turned into a full-time business.

That business has survived thanks to Duane, who took over in 1965. Duane had dabbled in other fields for a while—he’s worked for a carpenter and operated heavy equipment for the county—but one day while laboring on a construction project he realized he wanted to be back at the mill.

“It went through my mind that I’m working on the wrong end of the lumber,” he said.

Watch Duane work the equipment, listen to him talk about the machinery, and you realize that he’s where he was meant to be. He springs from one station to the next as he loads up a log or fires up the big saw blade. He’s got stories about every engine, every belt and every cutting bit that makes the mill go. 

Duane likes telling those stories, often sharing them with local school kids, Boy Scout troops and the Sammamish Heritage Society. 

“I guess I like history,” he said.

He loves to show off various types of wood, talk about the different grain patterns and colors and think about all the things people could make with a piece of good lumber.

Duane is especially proud of how his mill wastes little of the wood that comes to him. People come and buy the bark and the sawdust for all sorts of home projects. Odd bits and pieces are sold as firewood. Duane likens the wood to pigs. “Everything’s used but the oink,” he said.

It’s not all fun for Duane, though. There have been economic challenges over the years, especially in regards to the cost of wood. These days, he said, logs cost him more than the price he can sell the finished lumber.

Because of that, his business is almost exclusively cutting up logs that other people bring him. These could be contractors with a big housing project, or just someone who wants a bit of lumber to build a deck.

“Sometimes it’s just one log,” he said.

The economics of the business has killed off many of the smaller mills. Oftentimes, the equipment is auctioned off.

“It’s one of the few (places) that are still alive that links us back to the primal industries,” said Walt Carrel, a Sammamish Heritage Society member.

Duane has managed to keep his father’s old mill going, though, and remarkably without any kind of advertising. And he imagines that he’ll stay busy for a while more.

“As busy as I want to be,” he said.