Collection CR-133 - Delta Shingle Mill collection

The Delta Shingle Company was incorporated in 1909 to operate as timber merchants, shingle manufacturers, and sawmill proprietors in Delta. Wesley Thompson of Bellingham, Washington, was the owner of the company. He operated a shingle mill located on the Great Northern Railway (near 72nd Avenue) in North Delta between 1910 and 1916. The company had a logging railway called the Delta Eastern (or Delta Great Eastern), built about 1914, that ran from Kennedy Station on Scott Road through the forest in North Delta to the location of the mill. Prior to the logging railway, shingle bolts were hauled to the mill by horse and wagon. The mill produced shingles and railway ties, which were loaded on to a rail car on a spur of the Great Northern R.R. to be transported to market.

Wesley Harold Thompson was one of 6 children of Robert John Thompson and Emma Richards, born in Michigan in 1875. He married Laura Helene Olson Wilson in 1903 and they had 7 children. Their son Kenneth was born in New Westminster in 1915 while the family lived in British Columbia in the 1910's. Wesley Thompson owned and operated three shingle mills in British Columbia and Washington before retiring to run a poultry farm in Canby, Oregon, in 1920. Mr. Thompson died at 76 years of age in 1956 in Canby.