Souhegan Wood Products
Souhegan Wood Products, or SWP, is a company located in Wilton, New Hampshire, that specializes in the manufacture and distribution of a variety of recycled wood products. History Souhegan Wood Products (SWP) was founded in 1941 when C. Randolph "Randy" Myer purchased a sawmill and began running a dressing mill in order to process some of the two billion trees downed by the New England Hurricane of 1938. The name "Souhegan" is derived from the nearby Souhegan River, a tributary of the Merrimack River. During this period, the amount of wood going to waste was overwhelming, and solutions to wood waste were in high demand. Randolph Myer, a 1924 graduate as a mechanical engineer of MIT, became interested in using wood waste from lumbering operations after working for Longbelle Lumber Company, out of Texas, on their operations in Washington state. There he observed the amount of waste remaining after processing. During World War II, SWP manufactured ammunition boxes for the government. The war also created such a sharp demand for lumber that SWP was distributing wood nearly as a fast as it was cut, not allowing the wood time to dry. Myer built a dry kiln, where wood could dry