We are learning a lot about how the timber industry has been such a key part of the Seeley-Swan Valley for over 100 years. Our forests provided logs for lumber, and our loggers and truckers have worked tirelessly to make these logs available for mills. Let’s take a look back and see what the timber industry was like during the boom years following the Second World War, and how our area was involved.
Dr. Horace H. Koessler, owner of the Gordon Ranch, started a sawmill on the ranch in 1946, using local timber. The following year, along with some other partners, he incorporated the Intermountain Lumber Company in Missoula. This offshoot from one of our local mills grew to become one of the largest timber operations in the state.
Intermountain, located south of the Clark Fork and between Orange and Russell Streets, was a fixture for those who grew up in Missoula in the 50s, 60s and 70s. As early as 1950 we saw timber sales to Intermountain from the area north of Ovando of 3.5 million feet. By 1958, when the Waldorf Paper Products pulp mill was opened near Frenchtown, there was now a place for sawdust and chips to go. Intermountain claimed to be the first operation to completely eliminate its sawmill “tipi” burners by 1958.
Intermountain continued to grow, and by 1965 claimed a workforce of 450. The mill expanded into additional manufactured products as well, including the “Pres-to-Logs” many remember as a main source of household heat. An example of how large this operation had come was illustrated in the 1959 log yard fire. Missoulians were treated to retardant bombers flying low over town, assisting ground crews in extinguishing the fire along the south bank of the Clark Fork, just across from West Broadway. Close to four million board feet of logs were destroyed in the fire.
Before logs could get to mills like Intermountain they needed to be harvested, and another major player in Western Montana with large operations in our area was Jack Long and the Jack Long Logging Company. Born during the depression in Pennsylvania in 1931, Long’s mother brought the family to Missoula. In 1953 Jack bought his first Caterpillar tractor and started a company called Western Engines. His operations grew to 300 employees, 100 trucks and logging 80 million feet per year. Jack Long’s operations were extensive in our area and he built a shop in Seeley Lake. If you were driving Highway 200 to Missoula in the 60s and 70s, you were sure to see Long’s yellow Peterbilt logging trucks, hauling from dawn to dusk.
The Seeley-Swan area was key to the post-war development of Western Montana’s timber industry, both in supplying logs — and byproducts like chips — to the Missoula mills, as well as having mills like Pyramid.
What became of these people and operations?
Champion International, which bought the Anaconda Company’s Bonner Mill and land holdings in the early 70s, acquired Intermountain in 1977. At that time Intermountain employed 630 and the Bonner Mill almost 1,000.
Today the Intermountain site in Missoula is aptly named the Old Sawmill District, and is home to Ogren Field, Polley’s Square Condominiums and Cambium Place apartments. The Long shop in Seeley had subsequent tenants prior to being demolished when the new Rovero’s was built. The two innovative and successful leaders in the timber industry are also gone. Koessler died while flying his small plane to Jackson, Wyoming in 1987, and Jack Long died in 2018.
Just as with some of the early timber techniques, like cruising, that were pioneered in the Seeley-Swan, valley residents can also look at Intermountain Lumber, Jack Long logging and their founders as great legacies of the valley.
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