A Case Study for the Inland Northwest Economic Adjustment Strategy
Population: 900
100 direct jobs lost in 1999 with closure of Darby Lumber
Bitterroot National Forest timber sales have dropped from 20-40 million board feet p/year in the 1980's, to 4-13 million in the 1990's
Some ex-mill employees have pursued state-sponsored worker retraining programs / additional education
Some ex-mill employees have found new employment, but at reduced incomes. Others have been forced to move out of area
Background
Darby is located in Ravalli County, 64 miles south of Missoula between Hamilton and Conner. On the banks of the Bitterroot River near the Idaho state line, Darby is situated in the heart of the Bitterroot Valley, a popular recreation area hosting Painted Rocks State Park, the first USDA Forest Service ranger station and Darby Pioneer Memorial Museum. Collapsing log buildings still stand as a reminder of the gold dust days.
Darby's Pioneer Memorial Museum was originally one of the first hand-hewn homestead cabins built in the area. In 1958 an interested citizen purchased the building and paid to have it moved to its present location, adjacent to the city park on U.S. Highway 93. It became a museum depository for the extensive collection of both home and business artifacts saved by the many pioneer families in the area.
The old Darby Ranger Station was built between 1937 and 1939. From 1965 until 1990 this building was used by the Bitterroot Hot Shot Fire Crew, and in 1991 it was converted into an Historical Visitors Center.
Through The Mill*
Each morning for more than a decade, Harry Thorning got out of bed to drive his 18-wheeler loaded with Darby Lumber wood chips some 250 miles to Rexburg, Idaho. The long haul took him over four mountain passes. In bad weather, he'd chain up eight times. He loved his job, and it paid well.
The mill south of Darby shut down in 1999, forcing the 55-year-old truck driver to take a major detour in life. He still leaves home at daybreak each morning, but now he drives a 1983 Nissan compact car with a pile of math, computer and metallurgy textbooks at his side. The new road he travels takes him almost 70 miles north to Missoula and the University of Montana. Along his journey he passes the old mill site. Warehouses stand hauntingly vacant, and the old log yard lies empty. Thorning's been forced to trade the winding mountain passes for traffic lights.
It's been almost a year since Darby Lumber announced the mill wouldn't reopen, about 16 months since the initial shutdown put almost 100 people out of work. But many of the former employees still feel the impact. At the time, Robert Russell, Darby Lumber's chief executive officer, cited a poor timber market as a key reason for the closure. Lumber prices were at an all-time low, while timber sold on federal lands was becoming more scarce and costly. In May 1999, employees learned the mill was up for sale. If it didn't sell by Aug. 1, company officials vowed to liquidate all assets in an effort to pay off an $11 million debt. The mill didn't sell, and in late August, piece-by-piece, it was auctioned off to the highest bidder. Some former employees moved, driven away by a lack of well-paying jobs. Many others found work but at lower wages. A few took advantage of a federal program that retrains former workers, offering tuition and support dollars to learn a new skill.
Thorning now spends about three hours daily traveling to and from Missoula from his home near Conner and another eight hours in classes. He's studying welding technology. By May, he will be a certified welder. He may stay in school another year to earn an associate degree in applied science.
But many of Darby's displaced workers are finding it difficult, at best, to adjust to the changing economy of the West. "I don't think people realize how hard it is to start over," says Norma Mitchell. She's the wife of Robert Mitchell, who worked in the timber industry around Darby for more than 30 years. He was Darby Lumber's maintenance supervisor. Hard work and almost a lifetime of experience had taken him up the company ladder. Now he earns less than half what he made at Darby Lumber.
"We just barely get by is what it amounts to," Robert Mitchell says "It would be difficult if we still had the kids at home." At 53, Mitchell says, it's been hard to re-enter the job market. When he went looking for work, some businesses didn't hire him, he suspects, largely because of his age.
Even when Darby Lumber announced the first wave of layoffs in late September 1998, Mitchell had hopes the mill would reopen. "I didn't think it was permanent," he says. "I figured we'd start up again."
The Bitterroot National Forest surrounding Darby sold 20 million to 40 million board feet of timber a year during the 1980s. Through the 1990s, timber sales ranged between 4 million and 13 million board feet. Mitchell and many other employees lost both their jobs at the mill and all the value of shares they'd accumulated in the Darby Lumber Employee Stock Ownership Plan. The stock loss exceeded $30,000 for longtime employees. Mitchell says he never banked on the money for retirement, though. "A thousand shares of nothing is a thousand shares of nothing," he says.
The mill closure, Mitchell says, has reached beyond Darby Lumber's employees. Local grocery stores, retail shops, hardware dealers and tradesmen all feel the pinch, he says. "People that used to buy steaks are now buying hamburger," he says.
Not all losses have been economic. Norma Mitchell had hoped her three grown children could someday bring her grandchildren to visit the home where their parents grew up - a single-story house tucked away in one of Darby's quiet residential neighborhoods. Those hopes are dimming.
The Mitchells are seriously, but reluctantly, thinking of moving where the job market is better. Just a few blocks west of the Mitchells' quiet neighborhood is downtown Darby. Locals gather at the Sawmill Saloon, a rustic pub where old chain saws hang from the ceiling and tools of the timber trade are prominently displayed on the rough-cut, slab-wood walls. Old photos show loggers and huge trees larger than anything growing in the surrounding forest today.
Not as much beer flows at the Sawmill since Darby Lumber shut down. Saloon owner Gary Steinman says the slowdown is noticeable. The reason is obvious to Steinman. "There's no woods work at all," he says. "The forest isn't selling any significant timber."
Steinman, who worked as a forester for 15 years before buying the saloon, says the Forest Service should go back to cutting more timber and managing the forest for commercial use. "What we're not doing is quite a crime," he says. "The timber supply is there and not being used. The mill closure is a symptom of a lack of management."
Gerald Ring is one who did find another sawmill job after Darby Lumber closed, but it was more than 100 miles away. Ring was two days away from leaving Darby to start the new job at Pyramid Lumber in Seeley Lake when a Hamilton-area company offered him a job. He took it. "This is our home," he says. "We raised our kids here, but the sacrifice of staying here now is you have to take what you can get."
Ring says he's lucky to have found a good job with a family-run business, one he describes as employee-oriented, a short commute from Darby. He says he isn't sure why Darby Lumber closed. He thinks changes in federal timber policy, resulting in fewer trees cut on federal lands, was a major factor in the mill's demise.
Ring points to American Timber Co., in Olney, as another casualty of federal timber policies. The 72-year-old Flathead County mill recently announced plans to close its doors this spring. American Timber employs about 145 people at its mill west of Whitefish and provides jobs for another 100 or so subcontractors who work in the woods.
Harry Maxwell, 35, was one of the younger employees at Darby Lumber. He'd worked there five years as a forklift operator and was 80 percent vested in the stock plan when the mill closed. Now he's employed by Darby Distribution, a hardware retailer, earning $2 an hour less than he made at the mill. Like so many of his fellow millworkers, Maxwell faces an uncertain future. He says he wants to stay in the Bitterroot Valley, but every day it's tougher to make ends meet. "I have a fairly decent job," he says. "But it's hard to go from what I was making to making a lot less and still try to be happy."
When Darby Lumber's doors closed, new doors opened for a small group of former employees with dreams of attending college. Displaced workers may receive tuition and support money for up to two years under the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance Act.
Sharon Childress is one of six employees who took advantage of that opportunity, and it has proved challenging. A single mother with an 11-year-old daughter, Childress drives 170 miles round trip from her home to the University of Montana, where she's studying for a bachelor's degree in applied sciences, with a specialty in labor relations and arbitration mediation. The honor-roll student now has three semesters behind her. Her classes start as early as 8:30 a.m. and run as late as 9:30 p.m. It means spending a lot of time away from her daughter, Ashley. "She tries real hard to understand," Childress says. It's one of many sacrifices the pair has made since the mill closed.
Childress gets $700 a month as part of the federal program to put toward bills and support Ashley while attending school full time. She chose school, she says, because it was an old ambition and the Bitterroot Valley lacks decent-paying jobs. "You can't support a family on $6 per hour," she says. "All of the sudden, you have no income, and you are without insurance," she says. And things she once could give Ashley - summer camp or an occasional gift - she can't afford.
The school sends home fliers for new books, jackets, ski trips, and there just isn't the money for Ashley to get or do any of those things." One of the toughest decisions as a mother was to sell her daughter's prized possession, a 15-year-old Appaloosa Ashley had intended to show in 4-H. "We couldn't afford to keep him," Childress says.
Some of the best and brightest students in Darby's schools were children of millworkers, school officials say. They were a stable part of Darby's fluctuating student body. The number of new students entering Darby's schools is increasing rapidly. Almost as many students are migrating out of the area. School officials say they added more than 100 new faces to kindergarten through eighth grade this year, but the net enrollment increase was only 20 students.
Kurt Kohn, Darby's K-8 school counselor, guesses some of the families who stayed are living on less because they don't want to uproot children. So far, he says, children of former millworkers appear to be weathering the tough times well emotionally.
At People's market, Darby's only large grocery store, owner Terry Bergen says business slowed when the mill closed. "You just can't eliminate 100 jobs and not have an impact on the community," he says. Partly offsetting the losses, however, is an influx of newcomers. "We're fortunate to be in an area where baby boomers are buying homes and doing things to employ people," he says.
Former millworkers who'd paid off their mortgages when Darby Lumber closed are managing to survive, he says. They've taken different jobs that pay less but they are still living in the valley. "The young with houses (mortgages) ... they are gone," Bergen says.
"We've been transitioning a long time," says Forest Hayes, mayor of the town of 900 with an outlying population of nearly 5,000. While the loss of Darby Lumber hurts, Hayes says the town will survive. Much of the population now works in jobs unrelated to the timber industry. "That's not to downplay how devastating this can be," Hayes says. "On individual families, it's been extremely devastating."
A diversified economy will be key to the future, he says. "The more legs we get under this economic stool, the more stable it will be," he says. "When Darby was just in wood products, we were a one-legged stool."
