Old Missoula

Polleys Mill Whistle Has History Romantic [And so did The Missoulian reporting staff]

Whistle At Polleys Mill Served 30 Years In Michigan Lumber Industry

Residents of Missoula have been wakened from their slumbers lately by a deep-toned, melodious whistle which suggests a Mississippi river steamboat whistle of the days of Mark Twain. They hear it blow three times at 6 o’clock in the morning, twice at 6:30 o’clock and once at 7 o’clock. Then again at noon and at 1 o’clock; at 6 and at 7 o’clock in the afternoon and at midnight and at 1 o’clock in the morning. The whistle belongs to Polleys mill and because of its sweet tone and carrying quality it has been the subject of frequent remarks. Inquiries made at the mill by a Missoulian reporter received the proud assurance that the whistle certainly has a history. One of the members of the firm took the trouble to write out the history for the benefit of those who hear and wonder. He says:

B. A. Van Wormer, the mill foreman, bethought himself about taking a wife and recently hied himself east to the home of a boyhood sweetheart. He got his wife, and while strolling around his boyhood town came across the old mill whistle which his father – a mill foreman before him – made 30 years ago, and used at Grand Haven Mich. He could not bring his new wife to Montana without also bringing the old mill whistle – reminder of the days when the Michigan cork pine, was the only thing in lumber.

The lumber industry of Michigan is now almost a thing of the past, like the buffalo of the western plains. The mills are silent monuments of rusty machinery never to hum again except as an occasional saw, or some other available machine may be installed in the far west or south where the virgin forests are still smiling to the skies and awaiting the murderous axe of the lumberman.

The whistle served the Grand Haven Lumber company for 16 years, until a fire wrecked the mill. It was then put on the Baker mill at the same place where it sounded the call to labor and refreshment for eight years, until another fire silenced it again. Since that second baptism of fire it has remained in the scrap heap of the Dake Engine Works at Grand Haven until rescued by the enthusiastic benedict, who could hear “songs in running brooks and sermons in stones”[1] about that time.

The whistle will give a lusty call for the “infant industry” in our midst, and we trust for a long time to come.

The above article appeared in The Missoulian on September 19, 1913.

According to records available at Archives West, Polleys Lumber Mill was founded by Edgar H. Polleys in 1910, and operated until 1956, when it was purchased by Intermountain Lumber Company. It was located on what is now the Old Sawmill District of Missoula. Never melodious, a newer, sharper whistle at Intermountain Lumber featured prominently in my neighborhood while growing up in Missoula.