Disposition of NP Land Grant Timber Holdings in Montana. Any Info?

[GN_Fan]

Back in 1969, I hired out to the Northern Pacific as a forester, working in the Timber and Western Lands Division.  I worked out of Seeley Lake, MT about 60 miles NE of Missoula in the Swan Valley where most of the valley was of checkerboard ownership.  The railroad owned every other section (one mile square), with State, USFS, and the Anaconda Co. splitting the rest. There was a big chunk of contiguous railroad owned land just east of Jocko Pass, comprised of about 20 sections of timbered land.  All of these holdings were lieu lands from the original land grants and were not very close to the NP main line.  There was our office in Seeley, an office in Thompson Falls, the main Montana office located in the NP depot in Missoula, and corporate offices in Seattle.  The railroad also owned Plum Creek Lumber in Columbia Falls, but to the best of my knowledge it was not part of the Timber and Western Lands Division.

Of course the NP became BN thru merger, and in 1971 I left the railroad for another job.  Fast forward a half century and with my curiosity up I found our old office on Google Earth and saw that it was considerably modified.  So I wrote an email to the Chamber of Commerce in Seeley and was informed that it was not railroad property anymore.  Really curious now, I got on the BNSF website looking for the T&WL division and did not find it. 

I have assumed that the railroad sold all of their timber holdings as well as the mill, but I don’t know who they sold it to or when it was sold.  A recent Google search revealed that Weyerhauser bought Plum Cr, but it does not appear that the Plum Cr mentioned is the same company as it owned timber land in several states.  Does anyone have any info on this?

[Bruce Kelly]

Answers here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_Creek_Timber

As well as here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=plum+creek+montana&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

 

 

[Bruce Kelly]

And more specifically (hopefully), here:

https://mslservices.mt.gov/geographic_information/maps/land_ownership/

 

[GN_Fan]

I want to thank everyone for clearing this up for me.  It was my understanding that Plum Cr was just a mill and had no idea that it also owned timber land.  So, I never thought of going thru Plum Cr to find an answer.  Thanks a lot for all this help.