Plum Creek was spun off from Burlington Resources as a master limited partnership (MLP) on June 8, 1989. Burlington Resources was created from the Burlington Northern railroad's natural resources holdings in 1988. Plum Creek Timber is heir to some of the of timberland originally granted by the federal government to the Northern Pacific Railway in the 1860s, and most of Burlington's lands were originally purchased, or otherwise acquired as timberland. The MLP converted to a real estate investment trust on July 1, 1999 in order to obtain tax and accounting advantages available to real estate developers.