Sam Johnson

Samuel Spencer Johnson (September 1, 1911 – June 20, 1984) was an American businessman, legislator, and philanthropist in the state of Oregon. He owned saw mills and large tracts of timber land near the Metolius River, Black Butte, and Sisters, Oregon. He served seven terms in the Oregon House of Representatives; and along with his wife, founded the Samuel S. Johnson Foundation. He also served as mayor of Redmond, Oregon, from 1979 to 1984. Early life Johnson was born on September 1, 1911, in Berkeley, California. He was named after his grandfather, a sawmill owner from Minnesota. His father, Samuel Orie Johnson was a timber broker in California. Around 1903, his father moved to Central Oregon and began acquiring timber land in the area. His father bought what is now Black Butte Ranch, the Indian Ford area near Sisters, most of Green Ridge north of Black Butte, and the Wurzweiller Ranch, which included Camp Sherman and the headwaters of the Metolius River. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley's School of Forestry in 1934, Johnson returned to Central Oregon to act as his father's agent, buying and selling timber and land. During that time, Johnson lived in the old Sisters Hotel. In 1935, his father sold the that included the Metolius headwaters to him for one dollar. In the early 1930s, the Johnsons opened a saw mill in Sisters in partnership with Bert Peterson, the first of six Central Oregon mills the Johnson family owned over the years. During World War II, Johnson served in the Army Corps of Engineers. As an Army Captain, Johnson ran the Corps of Engineers' procurement office in Portland, Oregon, that bought lumber and wood products from around Oregon and shipped them from the Port of Astoria to Army engineer and Navy Seabee units in the Pacific. While serving in Portland, Captain Johnson met his future wife Elizabeth (known as Becky). She was a Navy recruiter for the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (commonly known as WAVES). They married in 1944.