This spellbindingly authentic oral history of pulp and paper making, told by the people who lived it, paints a moving picture of work in Oregon heavy industry in the mid-20th Century. Their stories describe in detail their jobs—varied, physically challenging and often dangerous—from sorting logs on the wide Willamette River to tending the giant machines that produced paper for America's favorite magazines. They used trees from Willamette and Columbia Basin forests and the power of mighty Willamette Falls to make paper towels, business staples like cash register tapes, Crezon backing paper for construction, thousands of tons of newsprint and telephone directory stock, and mulch paper shipped to Hawaiian pineapple plantations.

Share the experiences, hopes, and regrets of these 17 men and women, who spent decades at the West Linn Crown Zellerbach mill at a time when the Crown and Zee symbol dominated the west coast market in household paper products. Look back with them at a working environment before safety committees, environmental consciousness, and equal rights, at the base of a broad horseshoe of waterfall that periodically brought the destruction of historic floods into the mill's buildings. This expansive oral history of mill work in Oregon is food for thought for all readers, from engineers to sociologists. This collection, transcribed from more than 30 hours of videotaped interviews, honors mill work's culture and the deep contributions of mills to the building of the middle class after World War II.