Weyerhaeuser (NYSE: WY) has come a long way since it was founded in 1900. From three employees and a small office in Tacoma, Washington, it has grown to become one of the largest sustainable forest products companies in the world. As it celebrates its 125th anniversary this year, Weyerhaeuser is building on that long legacy and looking ahead to the next stage of its evolving story.
Weyerhaeuser President and CEO Devin Stockfish says the company’s approach to respecting forests and everything they provide — from clean water and wildlife habitat to countless products that are essential to everyday life — has always set it apart. “Historically, logging companies would harvest and move on, but the Weyerhaeuser family thought of a different way to do it. That includes taking care of people, supporting communities, and sustainably managing forests.”
Indeed, when Frederick Weyerhaeuser Sr. bought 900,000 acres of forestland in Washington state at the turn of the 20th century from the Northern Pacific Railway—a transaction that at the time ranked as one of the largest private land transfers in the United States—he set the foundation for a new, long-term view of forestry. Engraved on the lobby wall at the REIT’s headquarters, his words serve as a constant reminder of the company’s purpose: “This is not for us, nor for our children, but for our grandchildren,”
“That commitment is one of the reasons we’ve been around for 125 years,” Stockfish says.
Resilience is Key
Days after that 1900 land purchase, Frederick Weyerhaeuser, along with 15 partners, founded the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company. At the time, Weyerhaeuser called the undertaking “exceedingly speculative,” given the operation’s long distance to lumber markets, according to 1965’s Timber and Men: The Weyerhaeuser Story.
For a half century after establishing its Northwest presence, Weyerhaeuser focused on regional and national expansion, including its first foray into the U.S. South in 1956, buying 90,000 acres of timberland in Mississippi and Alabama. The following year it added 460,000 acres in North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland.
Renamed Weyerhaeuser Company in 1959, the company is now one of the largest private holders of timberlands in the world. In addition to timber and wood products manufacturing, Weyerhaeuser’s wide-ranging endeavors include real estate development and natural resources exploration.
The Seattle-based company is also seizing a new opportunity with emerging climate change solutions by leveraging its 10.4 million-acre U.S. forest footprint for renewable energy development, generating carbon credits and using subsurface rights for carbon capture and sequestration projects.
Weyerhaeuser’s highest concentration of U.S. forestland today is in the South, where it owns approximately 7 million acres stretching from southeastern Oklahoma through the Carolinas and up to West Virginia. It owns about 2.5 million acres in the Northwest and around 1 million acres in the Northeast, primarily in Maine. It also holds long-term licenses with the Canadian government covering 14 million acres.
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