Lumber mill set the stage 100 years ago

By JACK HOPKINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Among the earliest settlers in the late 1800s were Swedish-American immigrants August and Emil Lovgren, Olaf Edwin and their families. They opened a logging mill next to the Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railway that twisted through Snoqualmie Pass on the way to Seattle.

The Preston Mill, located within rock-throwing distance of what is now heavily traveled Interstate 90, was to become one of the powerful forces in carving out the future of the area.

The mill drew hundreds of families to Preston and Fall City -- most of them of Swedish descent. So dominant were the Swedish in the town of Preston that the Baptist church in the lower part of town conducted services in Swedish until 1939.

Preston Baptist Church pastor Gary Moen says the now-closed Preston Mill, the church and those of Swedish descent have always had close ties, although the church is multicultural now.

Mill owner August Lovgren, in fact, was the one who founded the church, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2000. Moen gets a kick out of that.

"Isn't it interesting that the church was founded by a logger, rather than by a pastor coming into the community and starting it?" asks the minister.

Among the church's more than 100 members is Randall Nelson, whose grandfather and father worked at the mill before he became the third generation to be employed there many years ago.

Nelson, 79, who worked in the mill's shipping department, says there used to be a saying in town when the mill was still in operation.

"They said if you were Swedish, you had a chance of getting a job at the mi