Weyerhaeuser, Frederick

Weyerhaeuser, Frederick

 orig. Friedrich Weyerhaeuser

(born Nov. 21, 1834, Nieder Saulheim, Hesse—died April 4, 1914, Pasadena, Calif., U.S.) German-born U.S. lumber magnate. He immigrated to the U.S. at age 18 and found work in an Illinois sawmill, which he and his brother-in-law bought in 1857. He traveled constantly to buy stands of timber and acquired an interest in many logging and milling operations. In 1872 he organized the Mississippi River Boom and Logging Co., a huge confederation that handled all the logs milled on the Mississippi. In 1900 he bought 900,000 acres of timberland in the Pacific Northwest and founded the Weyerhaeuser Timber Co. (now Weyerhaeuser Co.), centred in Tacoma, Wash. During his lifetime the company bought almost two million acres of land.