PORT ANGELES — Angeles Millwork & Lumber Co. has survived ownership changes, the loss of fishing and timber jobs in the area, the Rayonier mill closure and even the December 1996 snowstorm.
So on Friday and Saturday, company employees — who also are the owners — will celebrate 100 years of selling lumber and building supplies from the lumber yard at 16th and C streets.
The event will include vendors displaying doors, windows, tools and other building supplies and also special pricing on lumber, steel and other items.
Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty will provide the transportation shuttle between the Clallam County Fairgrounds parking lot on 16th Street for overflow parking.
Grew with city
“Business is excellent. The people of Port Angeles have been very good to us,” said Lonnie Linn, the company’s unofficial historian.
“We have a lot of things to be proud of. We helped make Port Angeles what it is. We watched the city grow up,” he said.
The company was started as a lumber mill at 11th and B streets in 1896 by the Fillion family, which moved to the North Olympic Peninsula from Michigan.
But that mill burned down in 1903.
So the company moved to its current location in 1906 and set up the lumber yard, which is why that date’s being celebrated, Linn said.
A holding company, Lumber Traders, owns both Angeles Millwork and the Hartnagel Building Supply store at Front and Race streets but the two operate independently, Linn said.
The Internal Revenue Service provides certain tax exemptions because the company is more than 100 years old, and those would be lost if the company were reorganized, he said.
Linn said people often think he has misspoken when he says the company’s “resale number” — which is issued by the state of Washington to track corporations — is 054, one of the first.
Angeles Millwork now has 34 employees. Hartnagel has 37.
Both are looking for more, Linn said.
