From 1871 to 1873 the Northern Pacific Railroad built the Prairie Line from Kalama on the Columbia River to Tacoma on Puget Sound, and as the railroad arrived, logging and milling moved inland along the rails. Many mills, including McIntosh, ran narrow-gauge logging railroads into the old-growth forests. A post office called Coinmo opened here in 1889, and the next year the railroad named a station McIntosh for one of its company officials. The first mill here was the Nesqually Mill Co. By 1900 it was known as the Perry Mill, owned by Tenino merchant Albert Perry and Tacoma mill manager George Lawler. Financial trouble sent the mill into receivership by 1904, and soon afterward the whole operation burned in a mysterious fire. Perry then became sole owner and started a new mill. Like many Western Washington mills of its time, the work was grueling and turnover was high, and by the early 1900s immigrant labor, mainly Scandinavians and Japanese, made up most of the workforce. The Perry Mill lasted into the 1920s, when the Green River Lumber Co. acquired it. As lowland timber supplies shrank, many mills shifted nearer the uncut high mountain forests, and by 1928 the company had also gone bankrupt. By World War II most residents had left, and equipment and buildings were moved or dismantled, leaving only a large pile of sawdust. In the 1990s the Prairie Line rails were removed. Today only a few scattered bricks and pilings remain, while the community's lasting legacy is the financial foothold it gave new immigrants whose descendants remain part of Thurston County.