Pend Oreille County Trivia comes from Faith McClenny’s Museum News of the Pend Oreille County Historical Museum.

This fall we will commemorate 100 years since World War I ended in 1918. An interesting tidbit of little-known history is that a number of men from Pend Oreille County served for one year in the U.S. Army Spruce Production Division located at different places in Washington and Oregon. Over a million men, experienced lumberjacks and private sawmill owners, working in the cutting and milling of spruce lumber which was used in the manufacturing of wing spars and other parts for light weight military airplanes. The strong spruce wood did not splinter when hit by bullets. From the beginning of the war, the U.S. sawmills had been supplying the allies with spruce wood but when the U.S. joined the conflict, the demand jumped and the Army stepped in and created the Spruce Production Division. Soon after, production when from over 2 million board feet monthly to 22 million. And men from Pend Oreille County helped! (Paraphrased a bit.)

I know that spruce wood was also cut from land west of Port Angeles.

Interesting trivia history.