December 11th was #InternationalMountainDay, so we thought we’d share the story behind our original logo featuring a mountain.

Pacific Mobile Structures founder Dick Haakenson graduated with a degree in forestry at the University of Washington. Dick has always been passionate about the great outdoors and pursuing interests like camping and canoeing. In fact, before he founded Pacific Mobile, Dick was innately passionate about starting a company building canoes. For him, there was nothing better than getting out on one of Oregon’s many rivers in a canoe. But instead of building canoes, he ended up building mobile structures and Pacific Mobile was born. When thinking about a logo to brand his company with, he wanted it to have a northwest flare that showcased the beauty of the great outdoors.

He recalled a time when he was volunteering with a group building a basecamp structure on Mount Rainier. He always wanted to summit Mount Rainier, and building the basecamp offered an opportunity. The day he was supposed to summit the mountain with his fellow volunteers, a white-out storm moved over the mountain and they never made it to the top – he never made it to the top.

With that mountain on his mind, he and his sales guy sat down at the Ribeye Bar – the local hangout back in the day – and sketched something up. Then, they took their rough sketches to a local print shop and the original logo came to life. The mountain in the logo isn’t Mount Rainier, only inspired by it. And while Dick never did summit Rainier, founding Pacific Mobile Structures was a peak well-earned.

The original logo was in service for about 12 years before it was retired and replaced by today’s logo.