Simon Benson

Simon Benson (October 2, 1852 – August 5, 1942) was a noted Norwegian-born American businessman and philanthropist who made his mark in the city of Portland, Oregon.

Simon Benson was born Simon Iversen, in Norway, one of seven children in the Berger Iversen family. His eldest brother Jon immigrated to the United States in 1861, followed by his sister Mathea in 1865. In 1867, his parents and the rest of the family also followed – landing first in New York City, and then traveling to Black River Falls, Wisconsin, to join the oldest son and daughter. Simon Iversen was 16 when he arrived in the United States. After arriving in the United States, the family had taken out naturalization papers, changed their family name to "Benson" and proceeded to become United States citizens.

Benson first went to work as a farm hand and later worked in logging camps and sawmills. At the age of 24, he opened a general store in Lynxville, Wisconsin. It did well until it was destroyed by fire three years later. Then 27, he was completely broke and now had a wife, Esther Searles, and son Amos to care for.

Having heard about all the timber there was in the Northwest and with his experience working in the woods and sawmills of Wisconsin, he moved his family to Portland, Oregon in 1880. Simon had two more children with Esther, Alice and Caroline, before Esther died in 1891 after a long fight with tuberculosis. In 1894 Simon married Pamelia Loomis by whom she had two more children, Gilbert and Chester.

Riding through two personal cycles of prosperity and poverty before his third and lasting success, Benson went into the business of logging in near Clatskanie, Oregon and Oak Point, Washington, downstream from Portland, buying up tracts of timber wherever he could. He introduced a number of changes to Northwest logging, including the donkey steam engine which replaced the oxen that had previously been used to haul logs. He later built the famous Benson seagoing rafts which could carry up to six million board feet (14,000 m³) of timber, cutting the cost of transporting logs to markets in California.

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