From the Associated Press via the Billings Gazette
DARBY - When the public library here moved from a tiny log cabin without plumbing to a stunning new building, patrons may have wondered if they were in a Western lodge: rock fireplace, rustic tables, armchairs that beckon, and the overarching use of logs with warm tones of brown.
It is the wood that makes the Darby Community Public Library a national showcase.
Beams and trusses were made from lodgepole pine logs so skinny that ordinarily they'd be passed over for construction. They're intended to show how logs otherwise used for posts, paper or firewood - if they're even taken from the forest at all - can work in modern construction.
Help came from the U.S. Forest Service, which wants to build commercial demand for logs 6 inches in diameter or less so more thin trees can be removed from forests profitably, reducing fuel for fires. Often, cutting and hauling these trees costs more than their market value.
The Forest Service's goal resonates in Darby, population 754, which is surrounded by the Bitterroot National Forest. In the summer of 2000, fires burned 356,000 acres in the Bitterroot Valley and destroyed about 70 homes.
Eye appeal
Five years later, the Forest Service points to the library, open since August, as an example of not only small logs' usefulness in construction, but their eye appeal.
"What really surprised people was the aesthetics of it," said Susan LeVan, an administrator at the federal Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wis. "We hope the Darby library will show architects, engineers and contractors that these logs can make a very attractive structure."
The library interior's graceful wood is the first feature drawing the eye as people enter by the circulation desk. Light washes in through circular windows, one with stained glass.
The 5,000-square-foot building with a masonry exterior has 10 times the space of the old log cabin and none of its logistical problems, among them lack of a restroom. Staff and patrons of the former library used restrooms at the nearby town hall or at a gas station across U.S. 93.
Lois Morris of Darby now finds the library a destination, not just a stop, when she is with her two preschool-age grandchildren.
"It's a place to take the kids that I know is a fun place to look around," Morris said. "It's an outing without going to a show or going to eat."
Plans for the new building kicked off in 2001 after library trustees received an anonymous gift of $250,000, with a requirement for matching funds. At the Bitterroot National Forest headquarters in Hamilton, north of Darby, a newspaper article about the gift caught the attention of the staff's Nan Christianson. She immediately thought of a Forest Service grant program, for use of small-diameter logs, as a way for the Darby library to get some matching funds.
The agency provided $30,000 for engineering and architectural work, the first of several grants.
"Push the limits on how small-diameter material can be used in the structural components of buildings," LeVan said in authorizing the initial money.
In Darby, a struggling timber town that saw the last of its four mills close in 1999, they pushed the limits on fund-raising, too. Music festivals, gourmet food fairs and smaller events such as a pie auction - a sour cream-raisin pie fetched $900 - helped the $900,000 library open debt-free. Library Chairman Veryl Kosteczko said about half of the funding came from various grants, and the rest from private donations and fund-raisers.
Thinning forests
The National Fire Plan initiated during the Clinton administration is intended to improve forests' recovery from wildfires, partly by reducing the supply of small-diameter trees that help flames reach the forest canopy, LeVan said.
"Once we have a crown fire, it's a whole beast by itself and it moves from forest to forest," she said. Heat from these fires can be so intense that the soil is sterilized and forest regeneration hindered, she said.
Small-diameter wood not fully dry has been put to use in Europe, but the Forest Service promotes the use of dry wood, finding that it works better for connecting the pieces in a building, LaVan said. Making those connections was the leading challenge in the Darby library, said Bruce Haroldson of Beaudette Consulting Engineers in Missoula.
"We do a lot of log work, but it's the more traditional, big logs that oftentimes far exceed what's required, structurally, to do the job," Haroldson said. "Using these smaller pieces is more efficient in some ways."
Uses for small wood
Haroldson helped the Forest Service produce kiosks with small wood for use at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. LaVan sees great potential for use of the wood in recreation settings: shelters for picnickers and nordic skiers, campground amenities, pedestrian bridges in parks. A pavilion is being built in Townsend, some 200 miles east of Darby.
The Intermountain West has the greatest volume of small-diameter trees that threaten to worsen fire intensity, but they are in other areas of the country as well, LaVan said.
"There's a lot more of this smaller stuff out there than the big stuff," said Ron Porter of Porterbilt Post & Pole Co. in Hamilton, which peeled and then rounded logs for the library. "We're optimistic about this to replace laminated beams in homes."
The library's innovative use of wood didn't stop with the beams and trusses. The ruggedly styled tables and chairs from Dead Wood Furniture in Darby were made with what the company's name suggests - wood from dead trees.
Just as the Forest Service points to the Darby library as a model, the state director of library development sees what happened here as an example for other communities.
"When people say, 'We're interested in building a library,' that's one of the places we tell them to look at, for a couple of reasons," Bob Cooper said. "One is the interesting design and material resources. The other is the community effort behind this. We think they're an example of how a community gets its act together."
