Wood burners

Once standard fixtures at sawmills throughout the Pacific Northwest, wood burners were used to incinerate the vast amount of scrap, sawdust, and wood waste generated in the milling process. By the late 1960s, however, the development of the secondary wood products industry - which recycled mill waste in products ranging from paper to particle board - coupled with highly restrictive environmental legislation, rendered the wood burner obsolete.

Deprived of their function, these structures are rapidly disappearing from the American landscape. Through essays, drawings, maps, and nearly one hundred photographs - including sixty-five duotone plates - Wood Burners examines the history of this little-known typology of industrial architecture.