Florence’s early industries grew from the natural resources of the Siuslaw River Valley, where salmon-filled rivers and old-growth forests supported an economy based on canneries and sawmills along the Siuslaw River. Fishing on the Siuslaw River had been a way of life for thousands of years, and the Duncan Cannery, the first in the Florence area, opened in 1877 near the current location of the Coast Guard Station, though its cannery and sawmill operations lasted only a few years because of shifting sand off the dunes. Other canneries followed, increasing demand on the fishing industry as boats used set nets, drift nets, and fish traps to supply fish that workers then canned or barreled. In the late 1890s, new regulations banned fish traps to protect dwindling fish supplies, and when efforts to increase fish populations failed, the once-booming canning and fish-processing industry declined. Timber also became central to Florence’s economy, as the Siuslaw River served as transportation for large logs cut near side channels and floated downstream to growing sawmills, which turned them into boards for settlers and shipped lumber by schooner to California for distribution around the country. Logging became a major employer and sustained a prosperous economy, but after timber prices rose during and after World War II and harvesting accelerated, much of the viable timberland had been cut by the late 1950s, leading to the industry’s decline. In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt created the Siuslaw National Forest by Executive Order Number 860 as part of broader federal conservation efforts, and although it originally covered more than 900,000 acres, it now spans 630,000 acres from Tillamook to Coos Counties, where crews managed fires, built trails, roads, and facilities, oversaw pasture and grazing permits, stabilized dunes, and guarded against timber theft.