Cruel story of Libby Montana's lost logging heritage

Dark clouds appeared in the 1970s, when timber corporations began wholesale liquidation of forests for quick monetizing of timber and replanting them with faster-growing trees

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By KIM BRIGGEMAN of the Missoulian

A recent addition to Libby's new economy sits in the town's abandoned mill yard.

It's the Lucky Logger Casino, and Jeff Gruber calls it one of the cruelest ironies.

On Friday morning in Missoula, as W.R. Grace & Co. officials were acquitted in an environmental crimes case on one side of Missoula, Gruber traced the rise and fall of the lumber industry in Libby on the other.

A Libby native and high school history teacher there, Gruber was the opening speaker at a county history initiative conference at Fort Missoula's Heritage Hall, part of a larger weekend of presentations, tours and Saturday's Preservation Fair billed Preserving Our Heritage in a Changing Landscape.

Gruber's was a story of a town that grew up around a family-owned lumber mill where long-term timber management was both practiced and preached.

They were really pioneers of sustained yield, he said of Julius Neils and his sons, who moved J. Neils Lumber Co. to Libby in 1911 as the forests in Minnesota played out.

Even after J. Neils sold to the St. Regis Paper Co. in 1957, the mill kept the Neils name, its managers and its philosophies intact.

In the words of one longtime employee, St. Regis bought us and forgot us, Gruber said.

Dark clouds appeared in the 1970s, when timber corporations began wholesale liquidation of forests for quick monetizing of timber and replanting them with faster-growing trees.

High-powered financiers became attracted to timber companies like St. Regis. A British financier eyed the company, then corporate raider Rupert Murdoch.

No longer strong enough to fend off another attack, St. Regis looked to Champion International as its white knight, Gruber said. The companies merged in September 1984.

Gruber read from a 1985 forestry report of Champion's Libby timberlands, which said, in part, The forestry department goal, starting in 1975, was to double the growth of timber on fee lands at Libby by the year 2000.

A forestry program was developed with yearly goals to reach that goal.

This is where it started, folks, he said.

Champion cut trees around Libby faster than the local mill could saw them, Gruber said. Hundreds of truckloads were shipped off to Champion's Bonner plant.

The company's logging department was eliminated in favor of contract, or gyppo, loggers. The mill's long-running Montana Light and Power Co. was discontinued, as were its box factory, Presto log plant and paneling and molding operations.

Champion focused on high volumes of commodity boards and lumbers and, in 1989, the Libby mill churned out a record 187 million feet of lumber and plywood.

Two years later, Champion was running out of wood and looking for a way out of its Montana operations, including 867,000 acres of timberlands.

Gruber said Champion, working with managers of the two plants, agreed not to break up the lands and mills, though it was widely known that Plum Creek Timber Co. wanted the timberlands. In the end, however, Champion didn't live up to its pledge - Plum Creek bought only the timber holdings for $269 million.

To soften the blow to the communities of Libby and Bonner, Plum Creek searched out Stimson Lumber Co. to buy the plants for $10.5 million, Gruber said.

Under Stimson, jobs at the Libby mill were cut from 650 to just over 300. The old-line sawmill and studmill were auctioned off in May 1994, and fire broke out as the sawmill building was dismantled. The flames crippled the powerhouse that provided steam, and electricity to the plant was crippled. Stimson didn't rebuild the plant, and soaring electricity prices in the late 1990s added a new financial burden.

The company received another setback when asbestos-contaminated vermiculite was discovered at several sites around the mill - byproducts of W.R. Grace & Co.'s mining operation outside town. Health insurance and workers' comp premiums went up over $1 million a year. With timber supplies diminishing, Stimson shuttered its Libby mill on Dec. 27, 2002.

His town is not alone among communities hit by the loss of primary industries, Gruber said.

But Libby is unique among them, for generations of Libby residents saw and heard and believed in the connection between land and community, he said.

Logging has always been a part of Libby's culture, Gruber said. Visiting football teams are met with roaring chain saws as they enter Logger Stadium. Logger Days have been celebrated since 1960.

Schoolchildren take woods tours and bring home seedlings to plant at home. There's a Lumber Shelf at each school library, and for years new teachers were given tours of the mill and timberlands to familiarize them with the local industry.

Whether it was J. Neils, St. Regis, Champion or Stimson, community projects always received help and assistance, Gruber said.

Community stability was tied to careful land and timber management.

The abruptness of the change to profit being the only consideration has been cruel for Libby, Gruber said. They feel betrayed and angry that they have been monetized.'

Stacks of wood cut locally by local hands have been replaced by the blinking neon lights of the Lucky Logger Casino.

There is, Gruber said, nothing lucky about it.

Additional Information

Web Site: http://missoulian.com

Category: Forestry>Industry Trends

Region: Montana

Ad Running: 5/9/2009-6/8/2011

Ad Posted: 5/9/2009 9:42:30 AM

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