Strength & Resilience: Tenino’s Wooden Money

Economic hard times can bring on creative solutions. When times get tough, people have to find a way to survive and keep going. One of those unique solutions came from a small town in Washington state, and it shows the resilience of the human spirit.

Downtown Tenino

Tenino, Washington, is a small town located 75 miles south of Seattle, with a population of just under 2,000. In the first part of the twentieth century, the local economy was based on stone quarrying, logging, saw mills, and coal mining. Then the Great Depression hit the town hard. On December 5, 1931, the town’s only bank, the Citizens Bank of Tenino, failed. The town ran out of money. What were they to do? If something wasn’t done soon, the town was going to go under.

The local chamber of commerce held an emergency meeting to discuss how local businesses would survive the Great Depression if no one had access to money. The bank had been assigned a liquidator who would eventually pay out a certain percentage of everyone’s frozen accounts from the remaining assets, but that would take time — time Tenino didn’t have.

The secretary of the local chamber of commerce and the publisher of the Tenino Independent newspaper came up with a creative solution. Being a logging town, they had access to a lot of wood, so why not put it to good use? He proposed to use the newspaper’s press to print the town’s own money or local scrip. Citizens could then assign up to 25% of their bank account to the Chamber in exchange for that value in locally printed certificates. Local businesses would then accept this scrip and redeem it through the Chamber once the liquidator had paid out.

The first issue of the new currency was in December 1931 and was on paper stock. Around $1280 was circulated amongst the people of Tenino, and $1080 was eventually redeemed.

Don Majors had been using his paper’s press for other printing jobs as well. That December, he started using what was called “slice wood” to print novelty Christmas cards. It was made from spruce and cedar that were shaved into 1/80 of an inch slices. He then used this wooden material to print 40 twenty-five-cent certificates in late December 1931. It was the town’s first wooden money.

In February 1932, a large run of wooden money was printed in twenty-five-cent, fifty-cent, and $1 amounts. News of this creative solution to banking woes reached the papers in Seattle and Tacoma, and eventually the story went national. Washington State Senator Dill had the story entered into the Congressional Record. Pathe News came to Tenino and did a newsreel.

Collectors began seeking out this unique currency and were willing to pay top dollar for it. Collectors around the country and the world wrote to the town asking for the scrip. The Chamber of Commerce would continue to print several more issues throughout 1932 and into 1933. By the end, they had produced $10,000 worth of wooden money, but only $40 was ever redeemed as it had become a valuable collector’s item. Many are still in collections around the world.

The Tenino Depot Museum continues to use the original printing machinery to print commemorative wooden pieces celebrating local events, organizations, and people for decades to come. The dollars can still be used at some local businesses.

This was not the only time that Tenino used this creative solution to meet trying times. Fast forward to 2020, and the local press fired up once again to print government-backed currency. The town used the wooden currency to help those impacted by the coronavirus crisis. The COVID-19 scrip came in $25 bills. Eligible households would be able to receive up to $300 in local currency. People could then use these wooden bills at grocery stores, gas stations, and restaurants around Tenino. The city would then reimburse the businesses. Tenino planned to print $10,000 worth of currency, the same amount that was printed nine decades earlier. The plan was approved by the state auditor and went into operation in May 2020.

Wooden scrip from both the Great Depression and the COVID periods were added to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History exhibit, “The Value of Money,” in 2025.

Humans are resilient, and when times get tough, this resilience shines through. Small towns like Tenino show that it is not the size of a town that ultimately matters, but the strength of its citizens. During the worst of times, ordinary people can take care of themselves and each other. The small town of Tenino certainly shows what a small community can do when it matters most.