MANUFACTURING OTHER THAN LUMBER.
The State of Washington has natural products either within its own borders or nearby, to foster many manufacturing industries, besides those having lumber for their raw material.
In the Puget Sound basin are vast deposits of lime rock, which is manufactured into commercial lime, supplying the home market not only, but is being shipped also to foreign ports. These are chiefly on San Juan island.
Considerable granite of fine quality is used in building and cemetery structures, from quarries in Snohomish and Skagit counties. Sandstone is being used for building purposes and is of splendid texture. Onyx of great variety and beauty is extensively quarried in Stevens county. Marble of good quality is being sawed up to limited extent. Quarries in southeastern Alaska furnish rather a better quality and are more extensively worked.
Clays of great variety, including fire clays and those suitable for terra cotta, are abundant, and large factories in King county are turning out common and pressed brick of many colors and fine finish, vitrified brick for street paving, terra cotta, stoneware, drain tile, sewer pipe and other kindred products.
At Concrete, a town of 1,200 people in Skagit county, two factories, employing 500 men, are daily turning out 1,400 barrels of Portland cement of fine quality, which is finding ready market in all the large cities.
At Irondale, in Jefferson county, a large plant has been in operation turning out pig iron. It is now in process of being turned into a steel plant and within a few months will be turning out steel bars and pipes for sewer, gas and other purposes. The ores are obtained from Whatcom and Skagit counties, some bog iron in the immediate vicinity and additional ores from Vancouver island. More than a half million dollars has already been invested and this will probably reach a full million when the plant is in complete operation. Although iron ores are present in the state in large quantities, no other serious effort is being made to supply the state with home made pig iron or its products. Here is a vast field awaiting brains and capital. The above represent only a few of the many lines of manufacturing that have been successfully developed in Washington.