This maker was founded in 1880 in Belmont by brothers Charles E. and William P. Clark. Their plant burned down in 1912, and they relocated to Olean. From the beginning they made sawmill and agricultural machinery, including steam engines. After World War I the company started making oil-field equipment.
In 1938 the company merged with S. R. Dresser Manufacturing Co. of Bradford, PA. The resulting company, Dresser Clark Co., became Dresser Industries in 1956, although the Dresser-Clark name persisted in informal usage. Dresser Industries merged with Ingersoll-Rand in 1987 to form Dresser-Rand Co., which moved its headquarters to Olean, NY in 2000.
"During the thirty-two years of our experience as manufacturers of this line we have ever earnestly and consistently tried to lead all competition in beauty of design, stability, convenience, efficiency, and weight of machinery.
We believe we can with justice claim to have originated and established in public favor a greater number of practical and perfect machines for manufacturing lumber than any other company or single group of individuals in this country. It has always been our purpose, as it always will be, to find and strengthen the weak and imperfect members in every machine we build, to keep ourselves in close touch with the operation of our equipment in the field, and to benefit by the advice and suggestion of the great mill operatives of this country. Indeed, for what measure of success we at present enjoy we are as deeply indebted to these men as to the genius and energy of our own organization.
We have just recovered from the effects of a disastrous fire, which on the night of May 11th last totally destroyed our Belmont plant. Because of having outgrown our available space at that point, and finding it advisable to greatly enlarge our works, we have adopted Olean, New York, as our permanent home, and have erected here a plant fully double in size and capacity our old works at Belmont. Our new ground space is four times as great as our old site, thus providing for still greater future expansion, and we now solicit your patronage, confident that if favored we will meet your most sanguine expectations as to quality of machinery, prompt delivery, and satisfactory service." (Quote from 1912.)
Information Sources
- American Steam Engine Builders: 1800-1900 by Kenneth L. Cope, 2006 page 55
- An 1886 patent for a sawmill carriage was granted to Charles E. Clark of Belmont, NY.
- 1912 sawmill equipment catalog, 200 pages.
- 1921 sawmill equipment catalog, 35 pages.
- The U. S. Forest Products Laboratory published a booklet dated March 1936, Operating small sawmills, methods, bibliography, and sources of equipment by C. J. Telford. A table lists the makers of various types of equipment, including circular sawmills, band sawmills, edgers, and planers. This company was listed as a maker of band sawmills.
- Thanks to Robert Clark Lippman, Jr., great-great-grandson of William P. Clark, for confirming the names of the two Clark brothers.
- More history and machine information can be found at Gas Engine Magazine.