Miles Fuels and Miles Lumber Company

Our Business

Below is a brief history of the Miles Lumber Company, as written by Eleanor Miles Fritz, daughter of R. K. Miles, and published in the Bennington Banner and Manchester Journal for our 75th anniversary celebration.

Who We Are

 From humble beginnings, Miles Lumber reaches 75-year milestone

Article date: 11/01/2002

ARLINGTON - When the usefulness of "cold chilled" plows and other iron farm equipment declined with the advent of steel, the Miles family foundry in Copake Falls, N.Y., had little use for the wood lots scattered around Southern Vermont.Richard Miles, who had finished college and spent some time as a surveyor on the West Coast as well as working for a large Midwest hardware company, joined an uncle to begin harvesting the timber from those lots. Crews, mostly from Canada, set up camps on site and cut and sawed the wood and sold it to lumber yards in the Northeast U.S.Around 1920, R.K. Miles joined with Bert Vaughn of Arlington and purchased an old mill on the Battenkill at the foot of what is now known as West Mountain Inn. (The building later burned and was replaced by another, which is still used as a guest house at the inn.)The mill had a woodworking shop, a granary where they milled grain and a sawmill behind the main structure that was powered, as was the other equipment, by a sluice. In the fall, local farmers would bring their apples to be pressed into cider, delivered by a hose to waiting kegs or bottles.A few years later, the co-owners purchased a coal business on Chittenden Drive and moved their building materials/lumber business to its present location, close to the railroad siding for easy delivery of coal, lumber and other goods. The old shoe peg factory across the roadway became the millwork operation, and so it remains today.In 1927, the company ceased to be Miles and Vaughn and became Miles Lumber Co. Later, a Manchester lumber and building materials company was added, and eventually run by son Dick Jr. Today, that company is owned by grandson Joe Miles.Through the years, there were further additions of buildings and products, including fuel oil and, at one time, firewood, which was taken in trade for a debt. In the 1970s, the company joined the family of Hardware stores and developed a Garden Shop and many other items to become a complete home building center.At 75 years young, Miles Lumber continues under the ownership of the Miles family with daughter, grandson and three great-grandsons participating in its management and striving to supply Arlington and neighboring towns with the same "quick, friendly old-fashioned service" that has been its hallmark.