The last steam powered sawmill in the u.s.

The last steam powered sawmill in the u.s.

If any of you guys get a chance to go to Oregon, go and see the last commercial steam powered sawmill in the U.S. It is located in Monroe, Oregon. This is truely a great experience to see and tours are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. These boys specialize in sawing Doug fir up to 85' in length. The name of the mill is Hull-Oakes Lumber Co. 541-424-3112.

https://www.garymkatz.com/OnTheRoad/HullOaks.htm

A family-run Oregon business is still going strong aftert 65 years

https://www.finehomebuilding.com/how-to/article/steam-powered-sawmill.aspx

Thanks for posting that. What an interesting operation. And probably dangerous. If anyone's interested there's a Paul Newman movie called Sometimes A Great Notion that is about an Oregon logging family that's worth seeing.

Those are some cool pictures. Brings back memories. I grew up on a farm and we had a sawmill although nowhere near as large as this one. It was made by a company called Belsaw. It was powered by a 1950's Flathead Ford. The saw blade on ours had removable teeth that were inserted with a tool that inserted them in a circular motion. They were crescent moon shaped. We also had an edger and a planer to dress up the lumber.

Cool ! I looked at every pic and read every caption :shock: ......................and that's a heck of an operation there. I bet it smells good in there with all that fresh-cut wood too, lol. 8)

There is a local steam enthusiast place local to us....I've been meaning to take the boys and for whatever reason haven't yet....But this thread reminds me too.

They have a steam powered crane, steam powered saw mill, multiple trains, and some other stuff. Over labor day they have a steam festival, with steam powered small engines, steam tractors etc,etc.
It is in Heston IN. They may have a website, I'll have to look that up.


EDIT: Looks like they have expanded and upgraded. The boys would love it.

https://www.hesston.org/about_us.html

That is really neat!!!!! The size of that band saw blade is super huge and they have to resharpen it every 2 hrs. That is pretty cool!!!! Thanks for the post.