FLASHBack 45 Years Ago This Month
Forty-five years ago this month,
in March of 1976, BPD’s sister publication, The California Lumber Merchant, covered news of reportedly the world’s first underground plantation. It seems that 3,000 ft. below the surface in Kellogg, Id., some 4,000 pondersoa, lodgepole and Austrian pine tree seedlings were growing in one of the ventilation shafts of the 90-year-old Bunker Hill Mine, comforted by a 75-degree temperature, ideal humidity, and insect-free air. “Sunlight” was approximated by high intensity multi-vapor quartz lamps. According to local lore, decades earlier an unknown miner had tossed aside an orange seed, which eventually sprouted into a fruitbearing tree. Thereafter, other miners began growing tomatoes, peppers, cacti, beans and a 20-yearold, 6-ft.-tall lemon tree. Construction of the 40-ft.-long greenhouse had started the previous summer. The trees remained below ground for six months before they were transplanted outside. In addition to producing merchantable timber, the nursery would also supply trees that could be replanted locally, to revegetate
THE MARCH 1976 front cover promoted Louisiana-Pacific’s redwood gleaned from its Northern California timberlands and manufacturing facilities. The operations were purchased by the Mendocino Family of Companies in 1998.
land affected by Bunker Hill’s own mining projects. Estimates put the cost of producing the containerized trees at $80 per thousand compared with $300 per thousand in above-ground commercial nurseries. Additionally, the trees showed better survival and growth rates than those grown in outdoor seedbeds and planted with bare roots while dormant. The experiment was such a success, operators decided to extend the greenhouse an additional 6 ft., increasing its capacity to 13,000 trees. Long-term, they hoped to enlarge the greenhouse to 510 ft. long to produce two successive crops totaling 100,000 trees per year.
In other news of 45 years ago: • The National Lumber & Building Material Dealers Association developed an advertising program for its retailer members. The series of eight ads, with illustrations by caricaturist Jim Herron, targeted do-ityourself homeowners and could be incorporated into dealers’ own marketing programs, including use in ads, window and counter card displays, and taxi/panel truck advertising. • A new wholesale distribution yard, California Timberline, was launched in Santa Ana, Ca., by former United Wholesale co-workers Bill Gunnell, Pete Skibba, and Bob Porter. The firm is still going strong, though now based in Chino, Ca. • Boise Cascade acquired sawmills from Avery Brothers Lumber Co. in Kettle Falls, Wa., and from Olsen-Lawyer Lumber Co. in White City, Or. It shuttered the White City plant in 2008, but continues producing in Kettle Falls.
SUBTERRANEAN NURSERY in Bunker Hill Mine, Kellogg, Id., would continue on even after the shafts were closed to mining in 1981.
54
n Building Products Digest n March 2021
• Lumber companies in the U.S. were weighing the possibility of switching from bd. ft. to meters, after President Ford signed a bill into law setting up a Metric Conversion Board to encourage a voluntary changeover to metric measurements. Spoiler alert: It didn’t catch on.
Building-Products.com
