Bozeman, MT, Mar. 28--For decades, Harry Nichols used an old timber home on his Augusta ranch as a cow camp for his wranglers. But over time, the elements took a toll on the cabin, and eventually Nichols abandoned it to Montana's harsh weather. It became a nuisance as it withered away.
"It was getting to be a hazard to cattle," the 81-year-old retired rancher said. "They could get in it, break through the windows and get hurt."
Instead of burning the home to the ground--a longtime method for ranchers to dispose of old buildings--Nichols hooked up with one of the many companies that specializes in salvaging old wood. Hilton Hern, a co-owner of Montana Rustic Wood Hub, gave Nichols $4,000 for the house, hauled it away and rebuilt it into someone's cabin.
Nichols' story is just one of hundreds. The old-wood resale business has grown tremendously in Montana and elsewhere. More than a dozen companies that specialize in finding old barns, cabins and buildings and taking them apart to salvage the beams have sprung up over the past two decades in Montana.
They comb the backroads in search of leaning shacks. They run ads in rural newspapers, offering cash for barns that have outlived their usefulness. And just as often, word-of-mouth lets ranchers know that those sagging buildings might be worth some money. As the years have gone by, people in the business have broadened their reach to include any kind of wood building, whether in town or on the range.
Over the years, the increased demand for old wood caused by more people looking for it has driven up its value. Some of the original companies who pioneered the industry, such as Bozeman's On Site Management, now buy most of their wood from smaller brokers who do the legwork and deliver timbers ready for use.
"There was a feeding frenzy out there," said Mike Riley, general manager at OSM. "Guys would come in and want $25,000 for a building that we wouldn't pay $8,000 for."
Some of the companies put the buildings back together essentially as they were. Others, however, remill the wood, turning the weathered timbers from a shack into trim, flooring and siding for multimillion-dollar homes.
The value of a building varies tremendously, depending on its condition and how many of the logs can be used, Riley said. For some of OSM's projects, it takes up to six buildings to salvage enough timbers to build a single new structure. Riley said they'll pay anywhere from $3 to $8 a foot for old wood.
OSM photographs a building before carefully disassembling it. The company keeps a photographic inventory of the buildings it has stored on its lot in Belgrade. Architects come in and look over the pictures and decide which building will suit their needs for a particular project.
Riley said OSM now buys much of its wood from brokers who show up with timbers that have been de-nailed and painstakingly labeled so the building can be reborn.
The most important element of any building is a good set of corners, because the timbers themselves can be cut to reshape the building. For example, a fireplace and chimney or windows can lengthen a side, which allows an architect to stretch a building.
And the corners reveal some of the best of Montana's historic craftsmanship. The Scandinavian, German and Dutch immigrants who settled here brought their woodworking skills with them. They found the fir and pine here easy to work with, and chiseled out quality dove-tailed corners, Hern said.
"Some of those guys were better carpenters than we'll ever be," he said. "You can hardly get a piece of paper through (the corners), and they made them with hand tools."
Unlike OSM, Hern said his focus is reassembling the building basically as it was found. Hern's clients are often looking for an old cabin, something they can put up on a piece of land that will blend into the natural environment.
Hern said he pays up to $2 a foot, sometimes a little more, for old wood, although he too said the price varies dramatically. Hand-hewn timbers fetch the best price. Hern said in many cases, however, a rancher wants to sell a barn that has rotted too much.
"I'll say, 'here's a book of matches. You've let it go too far,'" he said.
The recycled wood industry has its critics.
Some say these new expensive homes with the spectacular trusses and gateways made of century-old buildings are rapidly obliterating Montana's historic heritage.
"Like the old windmills in Holland that have historic significance, these old barns should be saved," Gallatin Gateway architect Pete Stein said. Realizing that takes money, Stein suggested tax incentives for ranchers and taxes on such things as billboards, to help pay to restore historic buildings in place.
"Tax the entities who are blighting the landscape to compensate the people who are preserving it," he said of billboards.
Riley said he's sensitive to preserving Montana's history. But the reality is many of the old buildings would soon be gone anyway. The salvage operation is a way to at least save part of that historic heritage.
"Quite frankly, the ranchers need the dough," he said. "You either recycle it, or it's going to be a pile of rotting logs in another ten years."
Nichols, the retired rancher, said he too is a history buff who collects antiques. But he's comfortable with moving a building from one place to another.
"The saddest thing is when you see something fall down and rot away," he said. "Rather than be a hazard and have them fall down, let's let these people take them down, clean them up and put them back together someplace else."
