The town was of Gilchrist was founded in 1938 by
the family-owned Gilchrist Timber Company, which
moved there from Mississippi in search of lumber
and lower taxes. The family moved their
operations to central Oregon, where they
eventually acquired over 100,000 acres of timber
land in Deschutes, Lake, and Klamath counties.
The Gilchrist Mill was
built in 1938, complete with company town
housing for about 500 residents. The town and
the central shopping mall were built with
aesthetics in mind. The Little Deschutes River
was dammed to create a large mill pond. All the
Houses were painted with a uniform brown color.
The attractive setting, large lawns, tennis
courts, and giant ponderosa pines made the town
setting a resort-like atmosphere.
In
1991 the Gilchrist Timber Company was
sold to Crown Pacific Partners, which
subsequently fired all its employees. The 120
homes and other facilities in the town were sold
to residents and others around 1998, with Crown
Pacific holding onto sawmill and timberland. The
company upgraded to handle smaller logs in 2000,
which were among the last remaining assets of
Crown Pacific, which declared bankruptcy in 2003
and was taken over by creditors at the end of
2004, and again bought by Canadian company
Interfor Pacific in 2006.
