29) Elma Lath Mill

Elma Lath Mill

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Looking straight southeast from the St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church, was the Elma lath mill. The Lath Mill in Elma was located at the river end of what we now know as Old Highway 15. In 1922 a man named George Gibson from Lac du Bonnet started up a lath mill, located by the CN bridge on the west side of the Whitemouth river. The mill employed between 30-35 local men at times. Farmers cut logs for the mill in the winter, usually upstream, so that the logs could be “boomed” down river. 

The mill was powered by steam engines that used slabs and saw dust for fuel. Each lath was four feet long, 1 3⁄4 inches wide and a 1⁄2 inch thick. They were packaged into bundles of fifty, taken to Elma on wagons and loaded into boxcars.  About 30,000 laths could be produced in a day. The lathers were used when plastering gypsum board inside buildings. 

It was finally shut down as the demand for wood lath decreased and metal mouldings were being used by plasterers. Later drywall gypsum board replaced the need for laths entirely. A novel use was found for the wasted saw dust; it was loaded into box cars in the 1930s for $15.00 per load and shipped to Saskatchewan, where it was mixed with poison and used as grasshopper bait.

Additional Details

Civic Number: N/A ; Click HERE to view coordinates. l    Amenities on Site: N/A   l    Building on Site: No

 Homemade, portable sawmill powered by a steam engine (1923)