Los Angeles has always been a city built on wood. Before steel and concrete took over, lumber was the primary building material — and the story of how that lumber arrived in Southern California is a fascinating chapter of the city's history.
In the 1870s and 1880s, as Los Angeles began its explosive growth, the region had virtually no local timber resources. The semi-arid landscape simply didn't produce commercial timber. Instead, lumber had to be imported, primarily from the Pacific Northwest.
Lumber schooners — specialized sailing vessels — carried enormous loads of Douglas fir, redwood, and cedar from ports in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California to the docks at San Pedro and Redondo Beach. At peak, hundreds of schooner loads arrived each year.
By the early 1900s, the railroad had largely replaced coastal shipping. The Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railways brought lumber directly from mountain mills to yards throughout Los Angeles. Massive lumber yards lined Palmetto Street in what is now the Arts District — coincidentally, very close to where our facility stands today.
The lumber that built early Los Angeles was extraordinary by modern standards. Old-growth Douglas fir timbers 12 inches wide and 24 feet long, clear redwood boards without a single knot, dense white oak with grain so tight you need a magnifying glass to count the rings — this was standard stock.
As the city grew and changed, those original buildings began coming down. But the lumber inside them retained its quality. A Douglas fir beam installed in a Bunker Hill mansion in 1895 is just as strong — often stronger — than the day it was milled.
That's where we come in. LA Lumber exists at the intersection of this history and a sustainable future. Every piece of reclaimed lumber we process is a tangible connection to the city's past, given new life for the city's future.
We sometimes find mill stamps and markings on our reclaimed lumber that trace specific boards back to individual mills in Oregon and Washington that closed a century ago. These marks are a direct link to the workers, forests, and communities that built Los Angeles.