JOSEPH, Ore. — JayZee Lumber recently finished a large order of locally sourced and milled lumber that will play a role in the expansion of Portland International Airport, JayZee owner Jim Zacharias said.

The mill, which is on the site of the old Boise Cascade mill in Joseph, isn’t a full-fledged lumber mill per se. The mill has no dry kiln to produce finished lumber and only does a little planing. It mostly does custom-cut lumber for projects large and small.

And this is one of the largest.

JayZee Lumber just finished cutting 18,000 board-feet of select 1×6 Douglas fir of random lengths for Sustainable Northwest. The material will be finished and installed in the new expansion at PDX, Zacharias said.

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Early this month, two truckloads, each with 45,000 pounds of lumber, made their way from Joseph to Portland.

“I want to thank my guys for working Sunday to get this load headed west,” Zacharias said.

The small operation only has two employees, he said. In addition to himself, William Devore and Stanley Cannon work the lumber yard.

Three generations

But it’s a longtime family operation. Jim’s father, Bob Zacharias, just retired from his Zacharias Logging at 88. Jim’s sons Tom and Seth run a logging operation called Pro Thinning that supplies some of the logs the mill uses.

“We’re pretty small potatoes compared to what it used to be,” he said.

Jim said he’s always eager to see vitality return to Wallowa County’s timber industry.

“The whole time I was growing up, there were two big mills in Joseph running 24/7, and one in Wallowa,” he said.

Now there’s just JayZee and Heartwood Biomass in Wallowa.

Local timber

Zacharias said Sustainable Northwest is an organization not unlike Enterprise’s Wallowa Resources that makes the best use of local natural resources. In fact, it was Wallowa Resources, founded in 1996 during the heat of the timber wars, that was Sustainable Northwest’s first partner organization in a rural timber community.

The organizers of the PDX work wanted to make the best use of the timber the Northwest is known for.

“We’ve done some work for Sustainable Northwest in the past,” Zacharias said. “They’re the middleman for this.”

He said Sustainable Northwest wants to showcase Northwest lumber in the project and may even install plaques throughout the airport indicating where the lumber came from.

“They’re using a lot of small guys’ timber,” he said. “They wanted tight-grain wood like we have here.”

A lot of that local timber comes from small landowners who have supplied Wallowa County’s timber industry for decades.

“I buy logs from different small landowners,” Zacharias said.

One example is the Joso Ranch north of Wallowa, owned by the Winn family.

He said Bob Zacharias managed timber on the ranch since 1972 and they’d harvest 100-150 truckloads a year there.

“They manage it for timber and grazing forever,” Jim said. “Three generations of Zachariases have logged off that ranch.”

He also has harvested timber from the 2021 Elbow Creek Fire also north of Wallowa, such as off the McKenzie Ranch near Promise.

“They were able to salvage some of the burned timber,” he said.

Another was the J and A Johnson Ranch, which has been in its family since 1872.

At PDX

Ryan Temple of Sustainable Northwest said he already knows where JayZee’s wood will be used.

“The 1x6s from JayZee Lumber will be used as a ceiling lattice for the concession area in the main terminal of the airport,” he told Zacharias.

Temple said the Port of Portland, which is behind the project, wanted to ensure the wood they procured represented a diverse range of businesses and forests across the region.

“An emphasis has been placed on locally owned companies that demonstrate a commitment to sustaining both their forests and their communities,” Temple said. “Throughout the process, the port has remained firm in (its) commitment, and Sustainable Northwest Wood has helped them to source wood that matched their values and to then track that wood back to its place of origin. Ultimately we want to remove the anonymity from the wood supply chain and instead celebrate the people and places that make it possible.”

What: Custom lumber mill

Where: 600 E. Russell Lane, Joseph

Phone: 541-263-1233

Email: jimz@jayzeelumber.com

Website: jayzeelumber.com

Hours: 7 a.m.-5 p.m. and weekends if needed.