WILLOW CREEK — The Willow Creek Hardwood Flooring Company has shipped 2,412,000 board feet of finished flooring through the first three quarters of 1952, surpassing the previous annual record of 2,080,000 board feet set in 1950 — and there are still three months left in the year.

The record reflects the sustained post-war housing boom that has transformed the American residential landscape. New suburbs are rising across the country, and hardwood flooring remains the material of choice for builders.

“Our biggest customer right now is a development in Levittown, Pennsylvania,” said Mill Manager Robert T. Cunningham. “They’re building four-bedroom Cape Cods with oak floors in every room. That’s a lot of flooring.”

The mill now employs 158 men, the highest number since the wartime peak of 1944. The night shift, which had been reduced to a skeleton crew during the late 1940s, has been restored to full strength. The planer runs six days a week.

“This is the best I’ve seen this mill in thirty years,” said Ezra Homan, now 46 and a shift foreman. “When I started on the green chain in 1906, we were running maybe 800,000 feet a year. To see this place running at three times that — it’s something.”

The Gazette is publishing a special industrial supplement next week profiling every department in the mill, from the log pond to the drying kilns to the finishing floor.

Not everyone is celebrating. The mill’s timber buyers report that the surrounding woodlots are being cut at an accelerated pace. “We’re taking oak and maple faster than it’s growing,” one buyer told the Gazette on condition of anonymity. “Eventually, you have to wonder how long that can last.”

But for now, the saws are sharp, the kilns are hot, and the orders keep coming. The sound of the planer, which has been the town’s heartbeat for half a century, has never been louder.

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