Joseph resident Jean Butler pauses to read auction company posters before going into the mill at the beginning of the Joseph Timber Co. auction last week. Photo by Elane Dickenson

Over 800 lots are sold, leaving Wallowa Forest Products as the county’s last lumber mill.

The equipment of Joseph Timber Co., the last sawmill in Joseph, was sold at auction Thursday, marking the end of an era.

In all, Maynards Industries Inc. sold 883 lots, ranging from graders, log stackers, saws and conveyor belts to fire extinguishers, computers and office desks. Maynards Industries, an auctioneering firm specializing in industrial liquidation sales.

“It was inevitable, considering the present anti-logging climate,” said Joseph mayor Kevin Warnock about the auction. He noted that although the mill has not actually operated for two years, “I’m not happy about the fact we’re losing the possibility of having a mill industry here again.”

Wallowa County has only one operating mill left, Wallowa Forest Products in Wallowa, which recently shipped in several carloads of logs by rail from Washington state in an on-going effort to keep its mill running.

The decline of logging in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest during the past 15 years has reached the point where about the only projects on public lands in the last two or three years are related to fuels reduction and habitat restoration.

There are more Wallowa County residents now employed in local art foundries than the forest products industry. According to the state Employment Division, the three main foundries in the county employ a total of 90 workers, while the additional 100 employees listed in the “manufacturing” category are divided among 14 employers, including the Wallowa mill.

As recently as 10 years ago, Joseph was the home of two operating sawmills. Then Boise Cascade shut down its mill permanently in May 1994.

Even before last week’s auction, Joseph Timber Co. – which operated under at least four other names in the past – had a rocky history, coming close to the auction block in 1985 and again in 1995. Both times last minute buyers stepped up in time to rescue the mill. This time there was no reprieve.

The Joseph Timber Co. mill site off Hurricane Creek Highway just west of Joseph was the successor to one first built near the Joseph airport, named Chief Joseph Lumber Co., in 1955. That mill burned to the ground in 1974, shortly after it had become Joseph Forest Products.

The Joseph Timber Co. mill began life on adjacent property as Hurricane Creek Lumber Co. when it was built by a partnership of buyers from western Oregon in 1977, but quickly became Wallowa Lake Forest Products when it was sold to the Hitchcock family partnership the next year. Through the years it has changed hands several times and in different incarnations was also known as Sequoia Forest Products and RY Timber. When RY Timber shut its doors in the fall of 1994, 68 mill workers were thrown out of work. The mill was last saved from demolition in 1995 when purchased by a partnership of Steve Kreiger and Gary Thebault.

The mill shut down again for six months near the end of 2001, but opened again with investment by a nonprofit named Community Solutions Inc. and the addition of some small log diameter equipment. In the end, however, Joseph Timber closed for what proved to be the final time and laid off its 47 workers in February 2002.

For a time after former owners, Steve and Paula Krieger, closed the mill over two years ago, there were enough rumors of potential buyers for a year or so to keep optimism alive. Wallowa County Commissioner Mike Hayward, who was among those with Community Solutions Inc., a nonprofit investor, involved in the effort to find a new owner, said that several potential buyers had looked at the mill. “The biggest concern was the lack of a consistent log supply,” he said.