The Northwest timber industry has been decimated by the nationwide housing slump. But one mill is still churning out planks.
It's on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in north-central Oregon. The tribes found an unlikely niche market -- sending their timber to Japan.
The plant provides much-needed jobs on the Warm Springs Reservation, where the unemployment rate runs about 70 percent. In the final installment of our seriesontribal economies, correspondent Anna King toured the Warm Springs' facility and explored the tribes' forests.
We're inside the Warm Springs timber mill. It's near Madras, Oregon. Sawdust floats about like fine powder on a mountain ski slope. And it's so loud you can't hear someone unless they scream at you.
But all this noise is a good sign. When most mills are silent, this one is making money.
At one end of the mill there's a glassed-in-room perched high up. Willard Tewee sits inside the slightly-less-loud booth.
Willard Tewee: "I just run approximately 2500 logs a day. And I can take a 23-inch log as long as it's straight, through this machine."
Tewee sits in a high-backed chair with two massive joysticks at either side. TV screens flash and lights whirl. He almost looks like fighter pilot in a Star Wars movie.
Tewee uses toggles to roll each log around and line up dozens of lasers on each trunk. Tewee is one of about 120 workers who are employed at the mill.
With most of the people on the Warm Springs Reservation unemployed, this is one of the best jobs around.
Willard Tewee: "To me it's like the top. The top. You know. I started from cleanup, what, like 17 years ago. I was a cleanup person and made it every day. And they took that into consideration when I bid for this job. And I won it."
But Tewee and everyone else at the mill came very close to losing their jobs last spring. That's when the company gave out 60-day notices saying the mill was going to close.
It came as no surprise. Declining domestic lumber prices, plus aging equipment were slashing the mill's profits. But a new company called Vanport, struck a deal just before the mill was scheduled to shut down.
Vanport is an Oregon-based international company that specializes in marketing timber to Japanese home builders. The company re-tooled the mill to cut metric lengths and widths.
Manager Chris Ketcham says unlike the U.S., the Japanese housing market hasn't been decimated.
Chris Ketcham: "So far they really like the lumber they are seeing here"
Ketcham says Vanport came to central Oregon because the semi-arid landscape grows tight grained Douglas fir. That's what his Japanese clients like.
Chris Ketcham: "We are very optimistic that we can continue this relationship and develop some real loyal customers over the next few years."
One other selling point -- the tribal forestry program has some of the highest environmental certifications awarded in the industry.
A loud bell herald's the end of the day. Down some stairs in the mill yard I meet up with one of the workers here.
Larry Switzler sports tattoo stars up the right side of his neck from his time in Iraq.
Switzler says he doesn't plan to work at the mill forever, but it's a nice place to land after getting out of the Army.
Larry Switzler: "I'm doing pretty good for myself for living on the reservation. It's pretty rough around here. There's not a lot of employment on a lot of reservations, but you know poverty is a big thing on a lot of them so, it's a pretty good deal that Vanport came and gave us an opportunity to work. So it's a good deal."
With so much poverty on the reservation, it not just individual workers depending on these jobs. It's everyone close to them too.
Claude Smith III takes me up to the woods on the Warm Springs Reservation. It's about an hour's drive from the mill. Smith is the timber manager here.
He grew up near the Warm Springs' mill and has worked in timber all his life. He laughs when I point out his battered hard hat wedged in the dash. It's plastered with stickers, scrapes and rattle-can paint.
Anna King: "That hat seems like it has seen some days."
Claude Smith III: "I've had it since 1998, so it's my baby."
Smith says as the economy tanks and mill jobs disappear across the nation, the Warm Springs are holding on.
Claude Smith III: "I know for a fact that the guys that live on the reservation and that are logging, there's got to be about six or seven people depending on that one income. I know there are a few dozen guys out here working with upwards of eight or nine dependants on him."
Smith radios to his crew to make sure there are no log trucks coming down the steep narrow road.
Claude Smith III: "Here's an old clearcut right here."
As we head up to high-elevation woods, we pass by stands that are ready to cut, and patches of forest that won't be ready again for decades.
In the past when America's economy boomed, many Indian reservations like this one were left behind. But 120 jobs are still here and no layoffs are planned.Oregon Public Broadcasting
