HistoryLink Tours

You are standing on the former site of the Clough-Hartley Shingle Mill, at one time the largest shingle mill in the world and largest producer of western red cedar shingles.

David Clough was a lumberman from Minnesota, and the governor of Minnesota from 1895 to 1899. He arrived in Everett in 1900 and immediately built the Clark-Nickerson Lumber Company at 21st to 24th streets of Norton Avenue (now Marine View Drive). Clough’s Canadian-born son-in-law Roland Hartley, also from Minnesota, arrived in Everett in 1902. The Clough-Hartley Shingle Mill opened in 1907 (known its first year as the Clough-Whitney). Hartley was the mayor of Everett in 1910 and 1911. He was elected governor of Washington in 1924 and served two terms from 1925 to 1933.

The Clough-Hartley mill operated until 1929 and closed due to the Great Depression. Roland’s son Edward was the general manager of the mill from 1924-1929. The mill sat vacant though the Depression and burned to the ground in 1937. Roland Hartley also operated the Everett Logging Company, which cut much of the timber for the Clough and Hartley mills. David Clough died in 1924, and Roland Hartley died in 1952. The northwest corner of this intersection was where the Weyerhaeuser Office Building stood from 1984 to 2016, which we’ll see later on this tour.

Walk west on 18th Street for about 100 feet. To your south are the former sites of two mills within the boundaries of present-day Naval Station Everett. This area is off-limits to civilians, so use your imagination to visualize the mills.