The Penokee Veneer Company began in 1939 when Marion C. McIver purchased the abandoned building of the Kiel Woodenware Company in Mellen, Wisconsin. McIver remained president of Penokee Veneer Company throughout its existence.
Operating first as the Mellen Veneer Company, the new firm almost immediately went into bankruptcy, and McIver reorganized it as the Penokee Veneer Company. The business then grew rapidly, relying on World War II defense contracts, and by the early 1940's, it employed more than 350 men and women. A major outlet for Penokee Veneer was airplane construction. The company supplied the birch veneer for the skin of the mosquito bomber, a wooden plane built in England. After the war, defense contracts decreased, and Penokee's work force dropped to an average of 150 workers. Although the company remained the largest in Mellen, its most profitable years were over.
During the postwar period, Penokee sold most of its veneer to plywood mills. One of its principal customers was the Splicedwood Corporation, a hardwood plywood factory in nearby Ashland which McIver incorporated in April 1943. Although the two companies were separate corporate entities, they were closely intertwined. They shared corporate offices at Mellen, and McIver, his brother John, and Richard J. Prittie, an Ashland attorney, sat on the board of directors and were executive officers of both companies. In addition to Splicedwood, Penokee Veneer had a number of other subsidiary companies. F.A. MacDonald Co., incorporated in 1942, and Chequamegon Forest Products, incorporated in 1952, engaged in logging. The Primax Corporation, which began in 1947, operated a granite quarry near Mellen. In 1947, McIver purchased the Scott Taylor Co., a millwork plant in Ashland. The company also opened sales outlets, the principal one being Almac Sales Corp. of Los Angeles, which started in 1950.
Calumet and Hecla Co. bought the Penokee Veneer Company in 1965. The next year, the conglomerate closed the mill in Mellen. Splicedwood continued for another eight years, and then it too closed. The only subsidiary company which survived was Primax.
Marion (Mac) McIver was born in Gillette, Wisconsin in 1906. He grew up in Antigo, Wisconsin, attended Marquette University, and then managed a filling station and a lumber camp. In 1932, he began an independent logging operation, which he ran until he bought the veneer mill in 1939. Marion McIver was active in the state Republican Party, manufacturers' associations, and numerous charitable and educational groups. At various times, he served as an advisor to the Office of Price Stabilization, as president of the Birch Club, a local organization of Northern Wisconsin lumber mills, as a director of the Veneer Association, and as a trustee of Northland College. In 1952, he assumed a one year term as president of the Hardwood Plywood Association, and in 1953 was elected president of the Wisconsin Manufacturers Association.
His brother John was born in Antigo in 1915. Before assuming the presidency of Splicedwood, he sold insurance in Rhinelander. John died in 1953.
