Longview

From his command post in a downtown Kansas City skyscraper, the nation’s foremost lumberman, R.A. Long, received the devastating report from his company’s timber scouts in 1918: his sources for raw material were nearly exhausted. The once-lush pine and oak forests of the Mississippi Delta had been stripped clean and converted into farmland. Now, his Long-Bell Lumber Company was at a crossroads. The timber baron put the question to a vote by his board of directors: disband or build the world’s largest lumber mill somewhere else? This group of middle-aged men looked upon R.A. Long as a father figure and a proverbial King Midas, able to turn wood into gold. Their decision was easy: they wholeheartedly endorsed the plan to build. And their vision became the Longview story, combining social engineering, modern marketing, and a whole lot of money into a 20th-century urban success story.