Qualla: Lumber Exchange Building (South Bend, Washington)

Lumber Exchange Building (South Bend, Washington): Introduction

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard T. Garfield, Public domain. The raiders came by steamboat. On February 5, 1893, a group of South Bend citizens boarded two vessels, sailed to the tiny hamlet of Oysterville, and physically seized the Pacific County records from the courthouse. They loaded the documents onto the boats and brought them back to South Bend, making it the county seat by force. That kind of brash confidence defined the town during its boom years, when sawmills produced a million board feet of lumber and a million shingles every day, when the population surged from 150 to 3,500 in half a decade, and when someone decided that this muddy waterfront settlement on Willapa Bay deserved a proper masonry building. In 1907, the Lumber Exchange Building rose on U.S. Route 101, the most substantial structure in a district of small wooden storefronts. It would stand for nearly a century before its facade fell onto the highway.

Image: Leonard T. Garfield | Public domain

Lumber Exchange Building (South Bend, Washington): Built on Sawdust and Ambition

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard T. Garfield, Public domain. South Bend was founded in 1869 by the Riddell brothers, Valentine and John, who recognized an ideal spot for harvesting the abundant coastal forest and floating logs downriver to their sawmill. The town grew steadily but modestly until 1889, when the South Bend Land Company forme...

Image: Leonard T. Garfield | Public domain

Lumber Exchange Building (South Bend, Washington): The Bust That Lingered

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard T. Garfield, Public domain. Boom towns rarely age gracefully, and South Bend was no exception. The Panic of 1893 deflated the speculative bubble that had inflated the town's population and land prices. Many of the newcomers left as quickly as they had arrived. The lumber industry endured, and the county sea...

Image: Leonard T. Garfield | Public domain

Lumber Exchange Building (South Bend, Washington): A Place on the Register, Then the Ground

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard T. Garfield, Public domain. On May 19, 1988, the Lumber Exchange Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places, recognized as the most substantial masonry structure in South Bend's commercial district and a tangible link to the town's logging heyday. The Pacific County Historical Society ha...

Image: Leonard T. Garfield | Public domain

Lumber Exchange Building (South Bend, Washington): The Morning the Facade Fell

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard T. Garfield, Public domain. On May 7, 2006, part of the Lumber Exchange Building's facade collapsed onto U.S. Route 101. No one was injured - the building had been empty for years - but the highway that runs through downtown South Bend was suddenly blocked by a pile of century-old masonry. Three days later,...

Image: Leonard T. Garfield | Public domain