https://www.opb.org/article/2023/11/15/new-lumber-mill-in-philomath-aims-to-market-oregon-hardwoods/
The Hardwood Mill
In November of 2023 I sat down with Dave Miller on OPB’s Think Out Loud to talk about something new for Patrick Lumber. We’ve been at this since 1915 — 108 years — and the company has changed shape more than once. We started as an office wholesale broker and over time became a secondary manufacturer, taking wood from sawmills up and down the west coast and refining it for furniture, flooring, windows, doors and cabinetry. For most of that history the wood was softwood: Doug fir, hemlock, red cedar, the species you see growing out here.
But there’s another resource in these woods nobody was using. As forest managers thin the western Oregon forests for fire protection, the hardwoods come down too: oak, several species of it, plus maple, madrone, ash, even walnut, which isn’t native but grows here just fine. A dozen species could be milled into lumber. Instead most of it gets burned, chipped for pulp, cut into firewood or hauled to the landfill. That always struck me as a waste. There’s far more of it than we could ever process, but we can make a difference, and lumber is a better use for a beautiful tree.
And some of it is beautiful. The figured maple around here has grain that looks like marble or granite, and there’s a grade called fiddleback that goes straight into violins and cellos. My own favorite is walnut: that deep, dark, rich color never gets old. You see the live-edge slabs coming off these logs for countertops and tables and they’re really pieces of artwork. Every tree has its own story.
Here’s the part people enjoy. We bought the Philomath site in 2016, the old Mary’s River Lumber yard that cut western red cedar, and we bought it mostly for the kilns. Next door sat a ten-acre parcel we didn’t think much about, until one day the DEA showed up and arrested an outfit growing marijuana illegally on it. Six months later we were able to buy that ground, and that’s exactly where the new mill is going. You can’t make this stuff up.
We did a trial run first on a little Wood-Mizer, cut a few species, proved we could dry the lumber, and sold the stock. Oak is stubborn, it takes its time. Full production should come in 2025. We’ll pay a family living wage, right next to Corvallis and Oregon State’s forestry program, in a town that’s always been a timber town.
I’m an OSU grad living in Corvallis now, so leaving Portland after all those years has been a joy, not a loss. Oregon is rich in wood, richer than Doug fir alone, and sharing that with the rest of the world is something every Oregonian can be proud of. Wood is good.