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R. A. Long's
Planned City
The Story of Longview
John M. McClelland Jr.
R. A. Long and his lieutenants in the
Long-Bell Lumber Company didn't set out in 1918 to build a planned city in
a remote corner of the Pacific Northwest, nearly 2,000 miles from its
headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri.
The company, founded in 1876 in Columbus,
Kansas, by Mr. Long and Victor Bell, had grown over 42 years into a
prosperous lumber manufacturing giant, with sales approaching $50
million. But the company's supply of Southern pine for it's mills in
Louisiana, Texas and elsewhere was fast running out. Long-Bell
executives faced a decision. The company could abandon manufacturing
and carry on its operations on a much smaller scale with its retail
lumber yards and string of mill
town stores. Or it could find a new
timber supply and make a new beginning in the sawmill
business.
This book chronicles the unique origins and
development of the city built in the Northwest by a Southern lumber
company. Long after the last remnants of the Long-Bell Lumber
Company have disappeared, the city it created remains, a living reminder
of the vision and energy of its founder: Robert Alexander Long
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 John
M. McClelland Jr. is a journalist with a keen interest in the history of the
Pacific Northwest. He moved to Longview, Washington, in 1923, the
year of its founding, when his father, John M. McCelland, was hired as
manger of the Longview Daily News. John McCelland Jr. later became
editor and publisher of The Daily News. He chronicled the founding
of the Southwest Washington city in an earlier volume, Longview: The
Remarkable Beginnings of a Modern Western City, published in 1949.
He has expanded on that history in R. A. Long's Planned City: The
Story of Longview. 
John
M. McClelland Jr. Available
at the Museum Store
ISBN 0-9664877-1-0
Westmedia Corporation |
