The Island Cedar Company started operations at Scammon Cove in 1883 and a post office was established there in 1884. The company relocated in 1890 and the mill was taken over by the H.C. Johnson Co. under Harold Johnson. In 1902 Maggie Walz (originally Margareeta “Kreeta” Kontra), a government land agent, began recruiting Finnish workers for a settlement on Drummond Island in the Scammon Cove area. The settlement was official in 1905 when she became the post master of the post office then named Kreetan. In 1916 Charles Wood, a piano key manufacturer, bought the mill and renamed it the Kreetan Company. The name of the post office was changed to Johnswood, a portmanteau in honor of the two lumber company presidents. Johnswood had a company store, theater with silent films, a boarding house, a school, a club house, and a small hospital and doctor’s house.

Lumber camps sprouted up on Drummond Island and private home owners would cut trees to sell to the mill. About thirty miles of rail were used to carry lumber to the sawmill, which would then be shipped from Scammon Cove. The first mill was an all-electric mill that burned down in 1918. The second was steam powered and was a shingle, lathe, box, and lumber mill.

That mill suffered damages in a fire in 1920. Hardships were faced in 1925 when a lengthy forest fire and decline of the lumber market affected the mill. In 1925, the Johnswood mill shut down, the post office closed in 1927, and the school disbanded in 1928 because many families had already left the Scammon Cove area.

In the early 1930s the mill and its three steamboats were bought and the mill was torn down. Johnswood buildings were torn down to be used as building material elsewhere on the island. Business attempts included a failed oil operation and the brief reopening of the company store under the name of Wayfarer’s Mart. The land was sold to the state after World War II. The only remaining structures of Johnswood are Harold Johnson’s Stone House and Wayfarers Mart. Two shipwrecks in connection with the mill are found in Scammon Cove. The Troy schooner barge was said to have burned at the dock in the 1920 fire at the mill and the remnants of its lower hull timber are still visible. The other shipwreck is Silver Spray, which was a tug boat that would have been used to maneuver schooners like The Troy. The Silver Spray was abandoned at the time of the mill’s closing and all that remain of it are the lower hull and boiler.