Pyramid Lumber in Seeley Lake, MT Closing

[Nameless Range]

Saw this today, and it is a real bummer.

Large Missoula County employer, Pyramid lumber, to close

One of Missoula County's last remaining lumber mills on Thursday evening announced its plans to close, ending a run that began in 1949.

missoulacurrent.com

From the article:

“As everyone at Pyramid knows, the company has been hit very hard by a variety of circumstances that are outside of its control,” the company said in a statement. “Among other problems, labor shortages, lack of housing, unprecedented rising costs, plummeting lumber prices, and the cost of living in Western Montana have crippled Pyramid’s ability to operate.”

 

[Nameless Range]

I believe Pyramid Lumber employs about 100 people. In a town of 1,400 that's a good chunk of the community.

Though Seeley Lake is part tourist town, I've always found it to be a tourist town only in part, and is a locale that has retained its identity as a place where Montanans without vacation homes live. I feel for these folks, and fear the outcome, aside from suffering families, will be the watering down of the character of the place never to return. I watched something similar happen where I grew up, where half of everyone's parents were employed by a local mine, and the other half used the community as a bedroom to their jobs in Helena. When the only large employer in that chunk of the county closed, only a decade or so later it was 95% bedroom community, and bedroom communities, or communities reduced to getaways for outsiders, just don't have that wonderful spice slowly disappearing from rural Montana.

I don't know what it has to do with hunting, other than as the west changes so does hunting in the west.

 

[Big Fin]

I read that. Agree completely, it sucks.

It hits home for me, also. When the Boise Cascade mill in our little town of 500+ people closed, the entire place went into a tailspin and it never recovered. I left five years after that event. The town now has about 180 people. You can buy a home for about the price of a new pickup. There's not even a place to eat. There are pretty much no jobs, so most folks still there are retired. Fond memories when I return, but it is only a shadow of its vibrant self when the mill was operating.

The social turmoil and disruption that comes with huge changes in these small towns that are reliant on one main employer is hard to explain. It permeates every corner of life and usually not for the positive.

I feel for the folks at Seeley. It's a neat little town.

 

[Forkyfinder]

Terrible to hear for that community.

 

[BuzzH]

Hits real close to home for me. My parents neighbors were the owners of pyramid. They retired and turned the business over to their son. My brother and I shoveled the snow off their sidewalks when they would head south for the winter. I interviewed for a Forester position with them a long time ago as well.

Of course, I also remember when Missoula had several saw mills, with my Father, uncles, cousins, and many close friends working at those mills. White Pine, Van Evans, ACM, Champion, intermountain, etc.

Pyramid was the one mill, largely due to location, that always seemed to weather the volatility of the wood products industry.

Surely going to impact Seeley, change is an inevitable reality. There is enough tourism that it should survive.

I've always had a soft spot for Seeley, even though as a good friend of mine that lives there said about it one day, "I swear this place is a retirement community for Carnies". I've had a lot of good times there too. Even found out one evening I was, in fact, the second toughest son-of-a-bitch in that town. I managed to find the toughest....

Part of my ashes will be scattered someday near a place within sight of that town.

 

[ismith]

Does anyone know if they own any timberlands?

 

[BuzzH]

Does anyone know if they own any timberlands?

Don't believe so.

 

[ismith]

Hits real close to home for me. My parents neighbors were the owners of pyramid. They retired and turned the business over to their son. My brother and I shoveled the snow off their sidewalks when they would head south for the winter. I interviewed for a Forester position with them a long time ago as well.

Of course, I also remember when Missoula had several saw mills, with my Father, uncles, cousins, and many close friends working at those mills. White Pine, Van Evans, ACM, Champion, intermountain, etc.

Pyramid was the one mill, largely due to location, that always seemed to weather the volatility of the wood products industry.

Surely going to impact Seeley, change is an inevitable reality. There is enough tourism that it should survive.

I've always had a soft spot for Seeley, even though as a good friend of mine that lives there said about it one day, "I swear this place is a retirement community for Carnies". I've had a lot of good times there too. Even found out one evening I was, in fact, the second toughest son-of-a-bitch in that town. I managed to find the toughest....

Part of my ashes will be scattered someday near a place within sight of that town.

Second toughest eh? What was the name of the gal who cleaned your clock?

 

[ismith]

Don't believe so.

Well, at least we can be thankful for that. Not much worse than seeing multi million dollar homes pop up like mushrooms on what used to be the best whitetail country in the state.

 

[BuzzH]

Second toughest eh? What was the name of the gal who cleaned your clock?

Yeah, even though it's challenging to tell sometimes in Seeley, it was definitely not a gal that was toughest.

One of those times about 15 seconds into getting things sorted out, you pretty well know nobody is getting out of that deal unscathed.

 

[ismith]

Yeah, even though it's challenging to tell sometimes in Seeley, it was definitely not a gal that was toughest.

One of those times about 15 seconds into getting things sorted out, you pretty well know nobody is getting out of that deal unscathed.

Loggers are a tough lot. It’s one of those jobs that turns you into rawhide if it doesn’t kill you.

 

[BuzzH]

Another interesting story about that area and the timber industry. In 1987 I shot my first 6 point bull one morning hunting with family. There was some active logging going on near where I killed that bull.

We drove around to a 2 person logging show, one guy operating a feller/buncher, another running a loader filling log trucks.

When the guy running the feller/buncher shut down for a minute I ran up and asked him if it was possible to get around them at the end of the day to get closer to the bull. Real nice guy from Seeley, Jim Richards.

Sure enough he and his brother moved their equipment off the road and we got close enough to drag the bull out whole.

Flash forward some time later, and Dad threw the Missoulian on the table one morning and said "read this".

Jim was shot in the back of the head with a .357 by his wife at the kitchen table. Seems she was embezzling money from the company, murdered Jim, and tried to make it look like a suicide.

Crazy shit...

 

[BuzzH]

Parole Denied for Woman Who Killed Husband in Seeley Lake - Flathead Beacon

MISSOULA — The Montana Board of Pardons and Parole has denied parole for a Seeley Lake woman who admitted for the first time last week that she killed her husband 25 years ago. Becky Lynn Richards is serving a life sentence for the March 1992 death of Jim Richards. Parole board executive...

flatheadbeacon.com

 

[ismith]

Another interesting story about that area and the timber industry. In 1987 I shot my first 6 point bull one morning hunting with family. There was some active logging going on near where I killed that bull.

We drove around to a 2 person logging show, one guy operating a feller/buncher, another running a loader filling log trucks.

When the guy running the feller/buncher shut down for a minute I ran up and asked him if it was possible to get around them at the end of the day to get closer to the bull. Real nice guy from Seeley, Jim Richards.

Sure enough he and his brother moved their equipment off the road and we got close enough to drag the bull out whole.

Flash forward some time later, and Dad threw the Missoulian on the table one morning and said "read this".

Jim was shot in the back of the head with a .357 by his wife at the kitchen table. Seems she was embezzling money from the company, murdered Jim, and tried to make it look like a suicide.

Crazy shit...

I remember a guy who had a whole log deck roll over him. Broke just about every bone in his body yet he survived long enough to die on the Alert helicopter.

 

[Deleted member 16014]

My dad, granddad, uncle and great uncle logged in the Swan and Ovando in the 60’s and 70’s. Some of them continued on around Lincoln into the early ‘00’s.

The biggest deer I ever knew of as a kid was a 190’s muley my grandpa killed near Seeley. Someone in logging camp had a moose tag that year as well…somewhere there’s a pic of both on a meat pole if I recall. He also killed a grizzly back in the griz hunting days in that neck of the woods.

It’s a special place that I spent a lot of time around as a kid. Great uncle Leroy had a place for family get togethers.

 

[RoughCountry]

Pretty easy fix, Trump 2024

 

[BuzzH]

Pretty easy fix, Trump 2024

WTF?

 

[Deleted member 16014]

Loggers are a tough lot. It’s one of those jobs that turns you into rawhide if it doesn’t kill you.

Granddad always told the story of a night in Ovando when a couple boys got drunk at Trixi’s and dropped his load of logs off the truck right in town. He said he got up, laced up his corks, went and took care of business; and those two found out about corks.

 

[Benfromalbuquerque]

Pretty easy fix, Trump 2024

 

[BuzzH]

Granddad always told the story of night in Ovando when a couple boys got drunk at Trixi’s and dropped his load of logs off the truck right in town. He said he got up, laced up his corks, went and took care of business; and those two found out about corks.

Trixi's is something else...