Owens & Hurst ends mill operations; workers ponder options

There it rested, in the vast emptiness of a mulch-covered log yard, with blue spray paint marking its significance for Eureka’s Owens & Hurst lumber mill: "last log."

A loader grappled the 30-inch-thick ponderosa, dropping it onto a conveyor leading to the mill, where on Monday afternoon it indeed became the last log to be sawed into lumber at the mill. The fat last log was considered a "pickle" at Owens & Hurst, a mill that has been processing trees with an average diameter of just 7 inches for the last few years.

About a dozen people, most of them Owens & Hurst employees or friends and family, walked in a solemn procession through the mill, watching the log being precisely whittled into stud lumber.

"I guess it’s closure for me as much as anything," said Jim Hurst, manager and co-owner of the mill for the last 25 years. "I walk around with a lump in my throat, but I’m a big boy. I’ll get over it."

By JIM MANN
The Daily Inter Lake

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