Company Town: Potlatch, Idaho, and the Potlatch Lumber Company

At a bend in the Palouse River, in the shadow of Gold Hill, rests the town of Potlatch, Idaho. It projects an image of gritty, working-class living. But its ordinary appearance belies an unusual past. Potlatch was a company town--a town completely owned by a large lumber company.

Company Town, however, is more than just another community history. It is a history of the Pacific Northwest in microcosm--the exploitation of natural resources; the impact of big business upon the development of a rural area; and ordinary people making a place their home.

Company Town gives us insights into the life of a rural community and follows its progress through the decades. It shows the close ties between community life and the larger spheres of the timber industry, regional and national economics, and international events. The book imparts a sense of what it was like to work in the sawmill and live in what the Potlatch Lumber Company had planned as a model town.

Keith Petersen received the 1987 Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History for his work on Company Town. Co-published with the Latah County Historical Society, Moscow, Idaho.