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The El Dorado Lumber Company first built their planing mill and box factory in Camino in 1901. Their rough cut mill was located across the canyon at Pino Grande and a narrow guage railroad connected the two by way of a cable across the canyon. 1904 saw a standard guage shortline, the Placerville & Lake Tahoe, connect the mill to the Southern Pacific RR in Placerville. Ownership changed hands several times and became the Michigan-California Lumber Co in 1918. In 1928 Mich-Cal remodeled this mill. After a fire in 1949 swept away the south tower of the cable, the mill and drying kilns at Pino Grande were moved to the site at Camino. At this point logging was switched to trucks as well and the narrow guage railroad largely removed in 1951.
At some point a new mill was built on the site of the drying yards and parts of the old mill were torn down or fell into disuse. 1986 saw the end of the standard guage, now the Camino Placerville & Lake Tahoe railroad. In 1994 ownership changed again to SPI. The old mill did find some uses but the whole mill site, both old and new, was mothballed on July 10th 2009.
During a trip to Camino in April of 2009, I took some time to tour the old mill and take many photos. Below you'll find the numbered images and a map of the mill complex. The map has been marked with numbers to match and arrows to indicate the direction of view in each photo. Note, the depot, wig-wam burner, monorail, box factory, planing mill and dressed lumber shed are now gone along with any railroads that were present.
 see also Camino Sanborn Map |
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