By the 1920s, most of the forest near Puget Sound had been logged, and the mills had followed the loggers inland towards the Cascade Mountains. The Preston Mill Company, in the Raging River Gorge between Issaquah and Snoqualmie, Washington, was one of the larger mills in King County. Swedish immigrants settled in the area in 1890 and opened the mill in 1896. It ran continuously until the late 1940s.

This Clarke Kinsey photo, probably taken in the 1920s, shows a group of Preston Mill Company workers standing near a donkey engine. The steam-powered engine pulled logs out of the woods with long cables, a process known as yarding. James Mattson, mill foreman, is second from the left in the front row.