These are the lumber mills in Chelan County that have closed.
Major Chelan County sawmill operations
1903-1926: Lamb Davis/Great Northern lumber mill, Leavenworth
1902-1990: Schmitten/WI Forest Products lumber mill, Cashmere
1928-1990: Sawyer/WI Forest Products lumber mill, Peshastin
1931-1979: Ardenvoir lumber mill, Ardenvoir
1950s: Sun Basin sawmill, Coles Corner
1991-2006: Longview Fibre sawmill, Winton
They used to have two sawmills in Coeur d’Alene too.
As did Idaho Veneer and Potlatch.
The Potlatch mill was sold in 1986 to Mr Haggadon. It is now the golf course for the Coeur d’Alene resort. The one with the floating green. I will be playing there next Wednesday.
The Spotted Owl was the surrogate used to kill off the logging on Federal and State lands in the Pacific NW. Even on private timber lands they changed the laws on how close you could log within a stream and other things. That was the biggest killer of the smaller mills that did not own private timber.
The problem for a lot of these mills that went out of business is that they never modernized. They did not install the newest equipment that cut down the amount of employees.
Like having ten employees to stack finished boards on a cart instead of having a tray sorter like the most modern mills have. I have been in a mill in White Swan, WA like this. It runs mostly to employ tribal members.
Almost all modern mills have computerized scanning and grading. Again, if you do not have that it slows down production. This is similar to how many robots are in a factory producing automobiles. They do not have as many employees as they used to.
The mills that did not keep up with the other modern mills went out of business.
There is also an economy of scale when producing lumber now. The largest modern mills in Europe run three shifts. They run 24 hours/day. Five days a week.
So, the production out of the same facility is maximized.
Therefore, lowering your cost of production/board foot.
So, now the mills that do exist are much larger than they used to be. One of the biggest is in Shelton, WA.
Sierra Pacific bought the location that Simpson Timber had operated for decades. They rebuilt a stud mill there that has the ability to produce 14 railcars of studs per day.
The former SDS now High Cascade stud mill at Bingen, WA produces about 4 railcars per day. As a comparison. When SDS operated it they only put out 2 cars per day. So, my point is that ONE mill in Shelton now produces the same amount as what 3 or 4 mills used to make.
The other thing is that I mentioned in my previous post is that the big mills keep getting bigger. Sierra Pacific now operates mill in CA, OR & WA. Plus they also own timberland in those states. Red Emerson has created one of the largest saw milling companies in the world. His most recent aquisition was a couple years back when he bought the two Seneca sawmills in Oregon. Now they are planning on spending millions rebuilding those.