竹東林場宿舍群

Zhudong Forestry District Dormitories

September 25th, 2026

A cluster of dormitories near Zhudong Railway Station built from the Japanese colonial era through the 1970s for staff of the Zhudong Forestry District, the post-war successor to a sawmill and timber yard established by Uematsu Timber (植松木行) in 1940 to supply the Japanese military. Zhudong served as the collection point for timber from Jianshi and Wufeng until dwindling resources and logging bans ended production around 1990. When the Forestry Bureau moved to demolish the dormitories as residents left, local groups campaigned for their preservation, and in 2025 they were registered as a historic building group together with the former timber yard office, now a forestry exhibition hall.

During the White Terror the Forestry District’s general affairs chief was in fact head of the local intelligence station, and in 1951 security forces raided its premises along with the cement plant in a sweep against an underground communist network.

The block on Donglin Road Lane 148 (東林路148巷) holds about 40 residences, ranging from detached, duplex, and row-house wooden dormitories to two-storey concrete duplexes of the 1970s, one of which was recently restored along Zhongzheng Road, while a smaller cluster along the winding alleys of Chang’an Road Lane 53 (長安路53巷) retains an air raid shelter of uncertain date.