John Suverkrup, senior partner of the firm of Suverkrup & Hook, manufacturers of and dealers in lumber at San Bernardino, has been sixteen years on the Pacific coast and twelve years in San Bernardino County. Prior to locating here he was engaged in the grocery business in Sacramento; and after settling in San Bernardino he for a time devoted his attention to farming. In 1887 he and his partner, John Hook, built the mill known as the Saverkrup & Hook Mill, on the mountains north of the city, which has a cutting capacity of 20,000 feet of lumber per day, and giving employment to eighteen or twenty men. The firm owns two sections of choice timber on the mountain, consisting of yellow, black and sugar pine, and cedar, which will require fourteen years to manufacture into lumber at the present rate of cutting, 800,000 to 1,000,000 feet a year. They own and conduct a lumberyard in San Bernardino for the purpose of handling the lumber cut by their mill exclusively, and in which they carry a stock of 500,000 to 600,000 feet of lumber. The product of the mill is transported down the mountain into the valley on heavy wagons drawn by six mule teams, which haul 2,000 to 3,000 feet at a load. This lumber, consisting of everything in the line of building material, finds a market in San Bernardino County. The firm is doing a prosperous business and has about $17,000 invested in the mill and teams, besides the land, which is worth about $10 an acre, or $12,800.
Mr. Suverkrup is a native of Germany, where he was born thirty-eight years ago. He immigrated to the United States eighteen years ago and spent two years in the city of Brooklyn, New York.