Timber & Towboats
May 7, 2008
The Brix Brothers’ Story
From the forested slopes of the lower Columbia River more than a century ago emerged a dynamic breed of boss loggers with ambition and savvy that set them apart from the other Bunyanesque men of their generation. They grew with the region and became Oregon’s lumbering elite, with notables like Johnny Yeon and Simon Benson. Counted among this group were the four Brix brothers, Asmus, Albert, Peter John (P.J.), and Anton. Between them, their logging and lumbering activities would stretch from Puget Sound to Coos Bay and a fleet of tugs and barges would carry Brix interests from Idaho to Alaska.
In 1879, Asmus became the first of the brothers to arrive in America from their native Germany. Two years later the rest of the family—Peter F. and Maria Brix and their six younger children—joined Asmus after enduring a harrowing trip across the continent. The family settled in the Grays River valley, in the southwestern corner of the Washington Territory, living for a time in a barn and eating from the small garden that Asmus had had the foresight to plant. Peter and his sons worked cutting trees and clearing land. This was the younger boys’ first practical experience with logging. In 1888, Peter and Maria lost their 5 year-old son Christoph to childhood disease. Seven years later another son, Herman, died as the result of a fall from a barn roof. He was 17.
In 1884, Asmus and Albert, then 20 and 18, formed Brix Brothers Logging Company. For nearly a decade the brothers snaked giant logs out of the woods using first teams of oxen, and after 1892, steam-powered donkey engines. As their siblings came of age they labored alongside their older brothers, including their sister, Margaretha, who cooked for the growing number of loggers living in the Brix camp. In 1896 the four brothers incorporated Grays Bay Logging Company and entered the realm of railroad logging. The Brix brothers’ fortunes began to grow and their interests spread.
Albert Brix moved to Astoria with his wife in the 1890s. He worked as the log seller for the brothers’ firm and for a time served as president Columbia River Loggers’ Association. In 1909, Albert, P.J., and Sven Lindburg purchased the sawmill at Knappton, located on the north bank of the Columbia River opposite Astoria. Later he managed a sawmill in Coos Bay before settling in Portland to oversee his wholesale lumber business. Albert suffered a fatal heart attack in 1921, when he was 55.
By 1895, Asmus and his wife, Christine, had taken up residence in Astoria as well. He became a stockholder in an Astoria sawmill and entered local politics. In 1906, he sold his stock in Grays Bay Logging Company to P.J. and enjoyed an extended European tour with his wife, including a trip to his former home. Asmus later retired to his farm near Clatskanie and in 1924 passed away at age 60.
Anton, the youngest of the surviving Brix brothers, was in charge of Grays Bay’s railroad construction. In 1904 he survived a runaway train wreck that took the life of one of his young employees and left him with a permanent limp. Anton moved his family to Tacoma and enrolled in a theological studies program. He later returned to logging, with operations around south Puget Sound, before coming back to the lower Columbia to log with his oldest son, Walter, in the 1930s. Another of Anton’s sons, Herman, better known by the stage name Bruce Bennett, was a standout collegiate athlete who later portrayed Tarzan in a number of motion pictures. In 1944, Anton, 67, succumbed to heart failure.
P.J. Brix had the most far-reaching and fruitful business interests of the brothers. In addition to the Grays Bay operation, P.J. opened logging camps along both banks of the lower Columbia. In 1925, he helped form K-P Timber Company and purchased the Kerry Line, northwest Oregon’s largest logging railroad network that tapped the dense timber stands of the Nehalem River valley. His interest ran in sawmills and shipyards as well. In 1918, he became president of Wilson Shipbuilding Company of Astoria, which turned out five large steamships before the end of the First World War. That same year P.J. moved to the Laurel hurst district of Portland where he remained active in the management of his holdings for the next 3 decades.
Upon P.J.’s death in 1948, at age 78, his son John took over the family’s longest-lived enterprise, the Knappton Towboat Company. The company evolved naturally out of the Knappton sawmill operation, when around 1910, P.J. purchased several small tug boats to handle log rafts and help moor seagoing lumber ships. During this period the tidal portion of the Columbia River was a veritable highway for logs with great rafts of Douglas fir and spruce being towed from remote log dumps to the many mills between Portland and the Pacific. Soon Knappton towboats, with their gray hulls, white houses, and trademark black “K” on the smokestacks were plying the waters all along the lower river.
John Brix experienced a heart attack in 1952, which limited him to a part-time work schedule as the company’s head. In 1960, after John passed away, his son Peter took control of the towboat firm and began an era of phenomenal growth. By the 1970s, Knapptontugs were barging oil and grain the length of the Columbia River, as well as offering ocean-going tug service to remote reaches of Alaska. In 1982, the twin-screw tug PJ Brix was launched and joined the fleet of 80 tugs and barges operated by the company. Peter Brix sold the Knappton Corporation in the 1990s, but continues to be involved in the tug and barge industry, carrying on a family tradition that has spanned nearly a century.