SPECIAL REPORT

rural economies Oregon’s historically timber dependent communities

struggle to diversify with increasing desperation.

What’s ahead for these

once-prosperous towns?

It’s a question far from answered.

STORY BY BEN JACKLET // PHOTOS BY FRANK MILLER

Oakridge city administrator Gordon Zimmerman

is searching for an industry to fill the gap left by
the closure of the Pope and Talbot mill.

26 • Oregon Business • NOVEMBER 2009 NOVEMBER 2009 • Oregon Business • 27

B
D
rural economies uring their glory days, Oakridge
trouble in timber town
and neighboring West Fir were
prosperous mill towns completely
surrounded by Douglas fir trees that the
U.S. government inventoried and sold by
the board foot. The companies that ran the
mills, Pope and Talbot in Oakridge and
Hines Lumber in West Fir, dominated the
Oakridge-West economy to the point where they printed
Back when the mill was humming day and night and Fir Chamber their own money. Employees were allowed
the hills were alive with the sound of chainsaws, visitors of Commerce
executive
to spend company money at the company
store, a dubious practice balanced by there
entered the town of Oakridge by passing a large sign director Randy being plenty of money for all. Gypo loggers
Dreiling believes sawed up mini-empires in the woods; log-
that welcomed them to the “Heart of the Timberland mountain biking ging trucks thundered through a labyrinth
can do for
Empire” and declared, “We owe our existence to the Oakridge what
of roads; and national forest employees were
wind surfing has
in constant symbiotic motion, building and
timber of this land.” done for Hood repairing roads and cleaning up after each
Oakridge still exists, but its timber industry is history. For more than a decade, it has River. harvest by burning and replanting thou-
been a company town without a company. The Pope and Talbot lumber mill closed in the sands of acres each year.
1980s. The smaller mill that took its place closed in the ’90s. The city bought the mill site in “It was a classic Sometimes a Great Notion
1999, tore down the old buildings and set to work trying to re-create a local economy. A deal town,” says Ben Beamer, who grew up in
involving a Nevada investor promising 16 businesses and 545 jobs vanished in the muck of Oakridge and is part owner of Brewers Lo-
the recession. Few locals speak of it these days without rolling their eyes. cal Union 180, a promising local pub that he
“We are a distressed and very poor community,” says city administrator Gordon Zim- helped remodel. “Nobody wants those days
merman as he pauses to consider the challenge he has inherited at the old mill site. “We are back. Having one big industry running the
doing the very best we can with what we’ve got.” show doesn’t work. Lesson learned.”
Surrounded by lush publicly owned forests no longer open to logging, Oakridge and Zim- As part-owner of one of Oakridge’s few
merman are laboring to make a difficult transition from timber town into something else. growing businesses and a sweat equity in-
Their predicament is a familiar one for once-mighty Oregon timber towns from Coos Bay vestor in others, Beamer is working with
to Wallowa. The surroundings are beautiful, the land is cheap, the community is hungry for a small group of entrepreneurs to redefine
jobs, and a small but energetic cadre of entrepreneurs is making plans for rebirth. A lot is in Oakridge as a destination for trail biking
the works. But very little is happening with employment. Even the most nostalgic old-timers and great beer, a place where the forest is
are coming to grips with the reality that the Timberland Empire is history. an economic asset to be preserved, rather
So what’s next? It’s a question that remains far from answered in Oakridge and other than converted into wood products. He has
timber towns. Oregon is the largest lumber producer traveled to Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas
in the nation, but that is not the grand title it once was. with Oakridge-West Fir Chamber of Com-
Between the steep reduction in logging on national merce executive director Randy Dreiling to
lands and the dramatic collapse of the housing market, promote Oakridge as a mountain-biking
employment in the wood products industry has dwin- Mecca, with the hope that biking will one
dled to less than half of what it was 20 years ago. Not day do for Oakridge what windsurfing has
so long ago, timber represented more than 50% of the done for Hood River.
state’s economy. Today that figure is under 12% and The fact that Dreiling, the chamber direc-
falling, and the number of mill towns that no longer tor, is a hard-riding trail dude who conducts
have mills continues to grow. These towns are left with interviews at the pub and is unlikely to be
an unenviable choice: diversify or die. Only how? seen in a suit is an indication that Oakridge
The reinvention of cities such as Newport, Hood is taking its push for diversity through beer
River, Astoria and Bend show that it is possible to build Craft brewer Ted Sobel, owner of Brewers and bikes seriously. It’s a vision that resonates
on a historic base of natural resources and develop a
complex, dynamic local economy. But it’s an epic chal-
Union Local 180, is one of a handful of
entrepreneurs attempting to reinvent timber towns with Zimmerman, a small-city veteran who
worked in Nyssa, Vernonia and Baker City
lenge. As Zimmerman travels past the abandoned mill, Oakridge’s mostly vacant downtown core. before taking over at Oakridge. “The trails
PRINEVILLE
through the poverty-stricken lowlands and up to the Roseburg, pop. 21,235 Prineville, pop. 10,370 BURNS-HINES will always be there,” he says as he steers his
partially completed hillside homes near the golf course Douglas County Crook County way around the new lots above town waiting
Seasonally adjusted Seasonally adjusted
built for timber executives, the obstacles facing him unemployment rate: 16.1% unemployment rate: 19.7%
for buyers. “That’s our resource now.”
and his town are unveiled in harsh succession: no rail Per capita income: $20,324 Per capita income: $21,313 At one point Zimmerman pauses in front
access at the industrial park, lingering pollution at the of a partially completed home and gestures
mill, stimulus dollars that have been slow to flow to Oakridge, pop. 3,745 Burns-Hines, OAKRIDGE at the forest in the distance as if in disbelief.
forgotten small towns, an in-migration of welfare re- Lane County pop. 5,000 OREGON “Look at that view!” he says. “That is never
Seasonally adjusted Harney County
cipients, an out-migration of families with children, unemployment rate: 12.2% Seasonally adjusted going away! It’s national forest! There are
absentee landlords, sprawling vacancies, an aging pop- Per capita income: $14,525 unemployment rate: 19.1% spotted owls over there!”
ulation, soaring joblessness. Not to mention the worst Per capita income: $16,159 ROSEBURG When a city administrator in a timber
economy since the Great Depression. town celebrates spotted owls, you know the
Sources: Employment Department, local governments, most recent census figures.
Unemployment rates from September 2009.

28 • Oregon Business • NOVEMBER 2009 NOVEMBER 2009 • Oregon Business • 29

 rural economies
rural economies
trouble
TrOuble in timber
Timber town
TOwn

tide has turned. The spotted owl’s designation as an endangered species enabled a flood of ing sizable profits. Then the bubble burst.
lawsuits from environmental groups that eventually brought an end to the high-volume Lumber prices have collapsed as housing
logging of national forests and created rural/urban divisions that fester to this day. Bob starts have plummeted. The industry faces a
Ragon, executive director of Douglas Timber Operators, estimates that Oregon and Wash- massive over-capacity problem that federal
ington have lost 35,000 jobs over the past two decades. Ragon’s clients have been among the logging would only worsen.
hardest hit, because 63% of Douglas County is publicly owned forestland. Ragon estimates that the industry is oper-
There is no disputing the role federal forest policy has played in the demise of Oregon’s ating at about 60% of capacity while await-
timber towns. But the real problem the timber industry faces in the contemporary economy ing prices healthy enough to justify revving
has to do with demand, not supply. For a few years, as the housing boom reached its peak up production. “Everybody has run into the
and developers cranked out speculative subdivisions in California, Arizona and Nevada, same wall together,” says Ragon. “There was
timber titans such as Weyerhaeuser, Hampton Affiliates and Roseburg Forest Products ap- no way to escape it.”
peared to be bouncing back, employing fewer people due to automation but still achiev- Roseburg, the largest city in Douglas
County, has never been a one-company
town. At its competitive peak, this tree-filled
county was home to 278 lumber mills. Most
of those have faded into history, but several
dozen remain, and with the diversification
of the economies of Eugene and metro Port-
land, Roseburg has emerged as the manu-
facturing center of the state’s timber indus-
try. “Timber is the dominant employer here
and most likely always will be,” says Debbie Allyn Ford, CEO of Roseburg Forest Products,
Fromdahl, executive director of the Rose- remains optimistic about the long-term forecast
for Oregon’s timber industry: “We’ve got the
burg Area Chamber of Commerce.
wood, we’ve got the technology, and we’ve got
But the industry has never been weaker. access to the biggest market in the world.”
As a result, Douglas County is struggling
with the highest unemployment rate in Or-
egon west of the Cascades.
Allyn Ford, CEO of Roseburg Forest

Products, Douglas County’s largest employ-
er and one of Oregon’s biggest private com-
panies, doesn’t expect improvement for at
least a year. “We are an industry that is built
for 2 million housing starts and here we
are at 500,000 or 600,000,” he says. “There
is so much capacity that any time you get
a little jump in the market, everybody just
piles on. We’re all desperately trying to cre-
ate cash. And the people who are left in the
game are pretty tough people. So it’s tough
out there.”
Smaller companies such as 55-employee
Nordic Veneer, the sole operating mill on
Debbie Fromdahl,
the North Umpqua Highway east of Rose-
executive director
of the Roseburg
roseburg
burg, are also struggling. Owner and gener-
Area Chamber of al manager Art Adams retooled the mill 15
Commerce, is years ago to adapt to the loss of old-growth
working with timber from public lands, and he figures he’s
other local surviving the downturn on grit and the qual-
officials to ity of his team. “There’s an element of sweat
diversify Douglas in this work, but you also have to be smart,”
County’s
economy. Still, she
believes timber
will always be the
dominant
local employer.
he says. “You need really smart people, and
that’s what we’ve got. My guys are mechani-
cal, they’re computer guys, they know how
to design things, how to fix things. Most of
them can do two or three jobs. That’s how
we’ve been able to survive.”
Others have not been so fortunate. The
collapse of the market has devastated not
only mills and mill towns but also ancil-
lary businesses that rely on wood products.
“The whole infrastructure is impacted,” says
Ford. “You look at the people doing the log-
ging and the trucking and the service indus-
try that supports all of that and it’s all down.
We normally do quite a bit of construction
around here. We’re always renovating and
tearing down things and building things.
That’s all come to a stop.”
U
nlike Oakridge, Roseburg has made significant strides to diversify its industrial
base. It is a much larger city, centrally located on I-5, with quality industrial land
and an active community college offering workforce training. Ironically, Roseburg’s
attempts at diversification have not held up any better than has the timber industry. For a
while the town hosted a robust boat-manufacturing cluster featuring a Bayliner plant and a
homegrown company called North River that claimed to be the fastest-growing aluminum
boat builder in the nation. But the Bayliner plant has shut down and North River has suf-
fered from a series of scandals that culminated with the September arrest of owner Brian
Brush for allegedly killing his ex-girlfriend.
Roseburg and Douglas County also went to great lengths to lure a Dell call center to town,
only to have the computer giant close up shop in favor of cheap labor overseas in a man-
ner that inspires resentment to this day. On the morning of a morale-raising “wear your
pajamas to work” day, employees showed up ready for a work party to find the front doors
locked and the operation apparently shut down. Terry Swaggerty, who served as Umpqua
Community College’s Dell recruiter, remembers that morning vividly. “We did back som-
ersaults for Dell,” he says. “For them to turn and bolt on us the way they did, it just left a bad
taste in a lot of people’s mouths.”
Most of the economic success stories of Douglas County have been locally generated, such
as Umpqua Dairy, the sewage system developer Orenco and the growing empire of the Cow
Creek Tribe, which runs a casino and a dozen other businesses and employs about 1,500,
more people than it has members. The VA hospital is a steady employer that won’t be going
away, as is Mercy Hospital. The local wine industry has also held up well and is poised to
expand significantly as a result of a string of major vineyard purchases and the Southern
Oregon Wine Institute north of Roseburg.
The combination of wine production and upscale tourism has worked wonders in the
Willamette Valley, but the Umpqua Valley is far from competing for those visitors. Local
wineries do not offer overnight lodging, and gourmet food is the exception rather than
the rule. One of the reasons people have been buying up land for wine cultivation is real

30 • Oregon
OregOn Business • NOVEMBER
NOVEMBER 2009
2009 NOVEMBER 2009 • Oregon Business • 31
 rural economies
trouble in timber town
estate is cheap. The countryside is gorgeous
but there is no destination resort other than
a tribal casino and a safari game park. And
the area is littered with large vacant prop-
erties that serve as lumbering reminders of
the downfall of the industry that fueled the
town through better times.
Helga Conrad, director of the Partner-
ship for Economic Development in Douglas
County for 10 years, says it has been a chal-
lenge to find replacements for the highly
paid union jobs people enjoyed while the
mills were thriving. Among the missing at-
tributes she wishes she had to market are a
four-year university, a commercial airport,
and a rail connection to the Port of Coos
Bay.
Given the mixed results in areas outside
of wood products, timber executives argue
that Douglas County, and the state of Or-
egon for that matter, should embrace the
industry upon which they were built.
“Our industry is very dynamic and very
solid,” says Ford. “There has been some drop
in employment and some drop in supply, but
the demand for wood products is still there.
Oregon is still No. 1 in lumber, plywood and
all wood products in the United States. And
from a technology standpoint we are world
class. You walk into our mills, you’re walk-
ing into lasers, computers. We’ve got robots
in our plywood plants now. I know the im-
age is that it’s an old, dying industry. It’s not.
Yeah, it’s been around for a while. But it’s not
dying.”
It frustrates Ford and other industry lead-
ers that state leaders put so much emphasis
on solar and wind energy, when Oregon
would seem to have a strong advantage in
producing renewable energy from woody
biomass. Another source of continual angst
for the industry involves federal timber pol-
icy, which appeared poised for change under
the Bush Administration only to stall out
under President Obama. Timber support-
ers make the case that a combination of fire
prevention, increased harvest and biomass
development (in addition to carbon credits
for planting trees) could restore Oregon’s
forests as well as its economy.
“You look around this county and you’ll
see a lot of 50- to 60-year-old Douglas fir,
which happens to be one of the best build-
ing materials in the world,” says Ragon. “We
have been on the top of the competitive heap
of that market for 20 years and we want to
32 • Oregon Business • NOVEMBER 2009
oregon wood product manufacturing employment Ochoco Lumber mill.
50,000
It marked the end of an era and the loss
of an annual payroll of $5 million when
Ochoco closed its Prineville mill in 2001. By
40,000
then the company already had shifted jobs
47,600 to Lithuania, where it bought a mill in 1994,
30,000
and transitioned from local production to
global marketing. Now Ochoco is making
20,000 another transition — one that has noth-
21,300 ing to do with timber. The company has
10,000 removed more than 4,000 tons of contami-
nated soil from its former mill and restored
0 the Ochoco Creek to lay the foundation for
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 a multi-use commercial district modeled on
Sources: Oregon Employment Department, Qualityinfo.org the Old Mill District in Bend.
It’s a compelling model. After Bend’s mills
S
ome 220 miles to the northeast, in Prineville, the landscape is different but the per- closed in the early 1990s, many observers
centage of publicly owned forestland is similar. Unlike Oakridge and Roseburg, Prin- predicted economic collapse. Instead, Bend
eville was not built on Douglas fir. It was built on ponderosa pine. The city’s founding doubled its population and built a vibrant
fathers developed a short line connecting the town with the main railroad line through modern economy in which land values
Central Oregon, and before long rail cars crammed full of pine lumber were pouring out of soared. The mill’s old powerhouse was con-
Crook County. The deal was so lucrative that the railroad paid for all city services and built verted into a Recreational Equipment Inc.
the county its first courthouse. store in 2005.
A generation ago five large mills cranked out lumber in Prineville and logging was a com- Bend’s mills employed 1,800 at their
mon, high-paying job. Today logging has all but ended and the two mills that remain in peak. Today the Old Mill District employs
Prineville are secondary job shops that have had to change radically to survive. 2,750. Not all of those jobs are full time,
Bob Horton, vice president of manufacturing for Contact Industries, which is headquar- much less union jobs, but they aren’t all low-
tered in Clackamas County but does its manufacturing in Prineville, says his company paid service jobs either. Bend has nurtured
would not exist at all if it hadn’t moved from making commodity wood products to filling an impressive collection of local startups in
custom orders. “What we did was we leveraged our understanding of both wood technol-
ogy and adhesive technology to redefine our product line,” he says. “At one time we were The railroad tracks that once brought
90% commodities and 10% specialties. Now we have reversed that. We’re probably 95% prosperity to Prineville come to an abrupt halt
specialties now.” next to the former Ochoco lumber mill.
Much of Contact’s business involves slicing high-quality wood very thinly and wrapping
it around cheaper wood and also aluminum, to solve specific problems for architects on a
job-by-job basis. “We’re the only people on the face of this earth that measure aluminum
products in board feet,” says Horton. “You can fight the commodities or find a niche. You
can listen to the green movement or you can ignore it. We listened.”
Nordic Veneer That strategy has enabled Contact to survive. But the local economy of logging, truck-
owner Art Adams ing, milling and distribution is gone. The railroad tracks that once symbolized Prineville’s
says he’s surviving connection to the outside world end abruptly in the middle of town, just short of the former
the industry’s
slump on the
ingenuity of his 55
employees. Bob Horton of Contact Industries
with one of the specialty
wood and aluminum products
manufactured in Prineville.
stay there. If our national forests were managed properly, the job losses would end and new
mills would get built. But people need certainty to invest.”
It remains to be seen whether federal forest policy will change, and if so, how. Another
question involves how well a return to intensive logging on public lands would mesh with
simultaneous efforts to develop an upscale wine tourism industry. Not every business ben-
efits from clear cuts and roads rumbling with logging trucks. Worth pointing out is that of
the many vocational courses at Umpqua Community College, one of the least popular in-
PHOTOS BY BEN JACKLET
volved preparing students for jobs in the timber industry. It was offered for several semesters
but was eventually canceled due to lack of interest.
NOVEMBER 2009 • Oregon Business • 33

rural economies
trouble in timber town
technology, outdoor equipment, and spe-
cialty foods and beverages, and while the
downturn has hit the area hard, its diversity
should help it to rebound powerfully.
For better or worse, Prineville is no Bend.
Furthermore, the strategy of following
Bend’s lead into real estate is hardly fool-
proof, as Prineville-based Community First
Bank found out the hard way. Community
First prided itself on investing 100% of its
local deposits back into Central Oregon.
Unfortunately, many of those investments
unraveled when the housing bubble burst.
Prineville’s community bank failed in Au-
gust, a casualty of a crisis that has cost thou-
sands of realtors, mortgage brokers, con-
struction workers and subcontractors their
jobs in Oregon.
Brooks Resources, which led the charge
from timber to real estate speculation in
Central Oregon, is also learning that which
inflates can also burst. After big successes
with the Old Mill District and the Black Butte
Ranch destination resort, the timber spin-off
has been hard-pressed to sell homes at its Iron
Horse project on the butte above Prineville.
The original plan called for 2,900 homes but
sales have been sluggish. All three builders
who invested are offering discounts.
From 2000 to 2007, Crook County was
the state’s second-fastest growing county,
behind only Deschutes. No more. Median
home prices have dropped by about 40%
over the past year in Crook County, and
with a local unemployment rate hovering
around 20% (the highest in Oregon), few
are expecting a recovery in the local market
anytime soon.
So what’s next?
Ask Jason Carr that question, and he reels
off a long list of possibilities ranging from
data server farms and wind power to plas-
tics manufacturing and higher education.
“We’ve got a lot in the works,” says Carr, a
former television reporter who manages the
Prineville office of Economic Development
for Central Oregon. “Unfortunately, every-
thing takes a lot of work here.”
Carr and other local officials are tapping
public funds to build a community college
campus, realign the railroad and develop a
switching yard near the main line. But each
new effort to diversify brings its own set of
problems. New discoveries about the inad-
equacy of the local water supply make server
34 • Oregon Business • NOVEMBER 2009
PHOTOS BY BEN JACKLET
oregon land ownership Private Wildland Forest ing harvest areas after the trees had been
Public Wildland Forest (USFS, BLM, NPS, State or Tribal) harvested. She loved the area and decided
Private Wildland Range
Public Wildland Range (USFS, BLM, NPS, State or Tribal) to stay and invest, even after the mill closed
Agriculture and Mixed Forest or Range/Agriculture and the economy crumbled. She bought a
Urban and Low-Density Residential
Timber industry advocates argue that thinning, woody biomass and specialty milling could boost Other (Sand, Lava, Rocks, Water)
house and sold it at a nice profit to a cyclist
local economies and prevent forest fires in the ponderosa pine forests east of the Cascades. who was up from California to participate
forest ownership in Cycle Oregon. That deal gave the buyer a
farms a long shot. A wind power development is making better progress, but local jobs in Private
Large, industrial
cheap second home with access to amazing
that industry are few. There’s a lot of support for a biomass power plant, but the economics 35% Family forest landowners biking, while enabling Robson to buy a new
are not yet looking favorable. 3% State of Oregon
State forests, State parks
home that came with a commercial building
“Economic diversification is not the sort of work where you see overnight success,” 60% 1.5% Tribal
on the main drag.
says Carr. 0.5% Other Public Robson has restored the building into
Cities, counties
Federal Government a massage studio called Mountain Thera-
H
Source: Map courtesy of Oregon Dept. of Forestry U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management
arney County, which rivals Crook County for the highest unemployment rate in peutics. Business has been brisk, commu-
Oregon, is set in a mesmerizing high desert landscape of endless sagebrush, with nity support strong, and other small break-
less than one person per square mile. It seems an unlikely setting for a timberland siana Pacific shutting down in the fall of 2007. Now that the RV industry has imploded and throughs are on the way just down the street.
empire, given the lack of trees. But it was the biggest timber deal in the history of the U.S. taken the local Monaco Coach plant with it, Harney County is left with 10 manufacturing “A lot of people thought it was the end of the
Forest Service that brought Illinois timber baron Edward Hines here in the 1920s. jobs officially, although the true number is probably closer to zero. It also has the highest world when the mill shut down,” she says. “I
Having secured a monopoly on 890 million board feet of publicly owned ponderosa pine percentage of public sector jobs of any county in Oregon. didn’t. They were really pissed off they were
forest north of town, the Hines Lumber Co. established the company town of Hines adja- In an effort to create new jobs, Grasty and the county are purchasing the former Louisi- losing their jobs, and I don’t blame them.
cent to Burns and built one of the largest lumber mills in the world. With an unlimited sup- ana Pacific mill and looking for a buyer. Their plan is to hire a salvage company to clean out But for me, this is an opportunity. This is
ply of trees to cut, no competition and a booming market, Hines could afford to pay good the old mill and recruit an established firm to restart the local wood industry through some something I can afford to be a part of.”
union wages in the town he named after himself. combination of harvest, salvage, fire risk reduction, biomass and wood pellets. They also After years of watching her town struggle
The market stalled during the Great Depression, but it returned with vigor following plan to use part of the property as an incubator space for promising local startup ideas from to replace Big Timber, Robson has conclud-
World War II, and well into the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s. When Harney County Judge Steve former mill workers and employees from the RV manufacturing plant that recently closed. ed that turning timber towns into some-
Grasty came to town in 1971 to work at an auto parts store, he was amazed at how much “We will chase everything,” he says. thing else takes time, work and a whole lot
money was floating around town. He thought he was living well on $350 per month, but Catching something won’t be easy. Bringing new jobs to a land as remote as Harney of small steps. It’s a lesson that applies to
almost everyone he met was making 10 times that, logging in the woods north of town or County will always be a challenge. much of Oregon, which continues to wrestle
working at the mill. Fortunately for Harney County, ranching has fared better than timber. The ranching with an unemployment rate well above the
“I’d seen people with money before,” says Grasty. “But I’d never been in a town where community has its own issues with public lands grazing restrictions and unpredictable national average, particularly in rural areas
everybody had money.” prices, but it has remained strong enough to keep downtown Burns in business, humming and especially in timber country.
In 1973, Harney County was the wealthiest county in Oregon as measured by per capita along with a vibe that is nothing at all like a ghost town — more like a friendly little place The economic forecast calls for a long, slug-
income. But more than 1,000 jobs vanished when Hines sold the mill in the early 1980s. where everyone knows everyone else. gish return to a downsized version of prosper-
Subsequent attempts to revive smaller iterations of the mill have been short lived, with Loui- “It’s the kind of town where you can walk anywhere you without worrying about being ity, with jobs in Oregon returning to pre-re-
safe and let the kids ride their bikes free,” says Jan Oswald, owner of Gourmet and Gadgets, a cession levels somewhere in 2013. The forecast
kitchen supply store downtown. “No matter how things are, everybody helps everybody out.” for the wood products industry is even bleaker.
Fran Davis, owner of the Broadway Deli down the street, adds: “If I can buy it in Burns, I Timber towns with sprawling industrial va-
Harney County do. Every dollar that gets spent in this town comes back around.” cancies will be hard-pressed to attract major
Judge Steve Grasty
Certainly fewer dollars make the local rounds than in the mill’s heyday. But a steady employers to their former mill sites.
vows to “chase
everything”
trickle of tourists and truckers keep the wheels of commerce turning, and the annual bird Reinventing themselves as bedroom com-
to revive local migration festival grows larger each year. Locally owned shops such as Grandma’s Cedar munities and tourist destinations will be chal-
industry. The Chest, Ribbons and Roses, Country Lane Quilts and the Tumbleweed Floral and Paper lenging. These towns will need all of the pub-
recent closure Company have managed to keep their doors open. The community emphasis on buying lic resources they can get and all of the locally
of an RV factory locally to help each other out has helped pull new shops such as Harney County Clothing grown ingenuity they can muster, whether
leaves Harney and the Children’s Barn through the worst of the recession. it’s public servants such as Steve Grasty chas-
County with no ing everything to create a few jobs in Harney
S
manufacturing. imilar green shoots can be found in Oakridge at the Trailside Café, at the Willamette County or wily timber veterans such as Bob
Mercantile Bike Shop, at a building being remodeled into a hostel for cyclists, and at the Horton and Allyn Ford developing new strat-
concerts in the park organized by Vivian Erickson, co-owner of the Oakridge Motel. egies to diversify the industry itself.
Mountain Bike Oregon sold out in August, bringing in 300 people from as far off as Perhaps most vital to the future of Or-
PHOTOS BY BEN JACKLET
Miami to ride on Oakridge’s hundreds of miles of trails through the forest. Motels were egon timber towns are the local entrepre-
booked, restaurants packed. Local beer flowed. neurs who recognize the opportunity in
As the summer tourist season faded into autumn, the Oakridge city center remained building something new where little cur-
plagued with vacancies. But one of the newest businesses to open is worth considering. Lau- rently exists, not with the goal of replacing
ra Robson originally moved to Oakridge to work for the forest service, burning and replant- what has been lost, but with the inherently
optimistic belief that more small successes
will follow, and things are bound to change
for the better, with time.
“This town is pretty empty now,” says Ran-
dy Dreiling, the trail-blazing director of the
Oakridge chamber. “But it was worse. And in
five years it’s gonna be way better.”
NOVEMBER 2009 • Oregon Business • 35