The St. Lawrence Boom and Manufacturing Company was a lumber company based in Ronceverte, West Virginia. It was founded in 1802 by a Colonel Cecil C. Clay, a former US Army Brigadier-General from Philadelphia. Colonel Clay recognized the natural resources in the large stands of virgin white pine and red spruce in Pocahontas County, which today involves enormous portions of the Monongahela National Forest. At this point in history, loggers calculated that these massive forests would have time to replenish themselves by the time they cut from one side of the wilderness to the other.