CARSON CITY, Nev. – Drivers heading up or down Highway 50 as it opens up into Carson City may have noticed stacks of logs piled to the south. The 40 acres where those logs reside is Washoe Tribe land and now the location of Tahoe Forest Products, the first new industrial-scale sawmill in the Sierra Nevada in several decades.

“The question of why get into the sawmill business,” company chairman Kevin Leary says, “when most of the industry is currently losing money is a very good one.”

The answer highlights a shift forest management and its urgency. Leary explains after fires like Caldor, Tamarack and others that have burned millions of acres in California, it’s ignited a political and public push to get a handle on the unhealthy and overstocked forests that have lead up to this mega-fire crisis.

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All the excess wood in the forests presented an opportunity. “There’s will to get it off the forest floor and clean up our forests and have a healthy forest, but,” he adds, “there [was] nowhere for it to go.”

Lisa Herron with the USDA Forest Service-Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, explains prior to Tahoe Forest Products, the closest mills were located far enough away from the Tahoe basin to make transporting logs cost prohibitive.

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The distance to the nearest mill was at times enough to disqualify fuels treatments in the region all together. “The Forest Service has seen many fuels reductions treatment projects not receive bids in our region,” Herron says, “because intake facilities are too far away or lack capacity after handling their own land and logs.”

That’s where Leary with Hallador Investments, Inc. decided to step in and create Tahoe Forest Products.

“Now, the Tahoe Forest Products mill will help bridge those gaps,” Herron says.

Hallador Invesetments, having investments in other commodity businesses, knew with large supply comes low costs.

“The lumber market’s in a pretty poor spot right now,” Leary says, “but we built this facility hoping that our friends in the forest service got serious about their commitments to reducing fuel loads and to sending wood to our facility, and so far that has been the case.”

It’s proven to be a mutually beneficial relationship with about 90% of their stock coming from national forests.

The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, the Eldorado National Forest, and the Inyo National Forest have supplied logs. Tahoe Forest Products is also working with the forest service to eventually include logs from the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and the Plumas National Forest, plus other Tribes and partners.

“Tahoe Forest Products Mill provides an invaluable regional intake resource,” Herron says “for forest service wildfire recovery and forest resilience projects.”

According to Leary, the annual growth of the forest within 100 miles of the mill is more than the facility can even process.

Just two weeks after signing the lease with the Tribe, the facility started receiving Caldor Fire salvage logs from Sierra at Tahoe. “I mean that’s how much bursting demand there was for a place for local logs.”

Knowing the urgency, Leary and his investment firm made some pretty radical business moves. “You could say we were kind of crazy and that we had spent millions of dollars before we had a location to start installing it but that’s what we did.”

Finding a location proved difficult. The company looked at nearly a dozen sites that weren’t feasible due to regulations making building an industrial facility anywhere near Lake Tahoe impossible.

Leary and his team almost gave up on idea entirely. Before throwing in the towel completely, the Tahoe Fund introduced the company to the Washoe Tribe who had 140 acres at Tahoe’s doorstep. In addition to providing feasible land, the Washoe Tribe also shares values.

“They live in this forest like we do,” Leary lists, “They want to take care of this forest. The Washoe Tribe has actively managed our local forests since time immemorial.”

Not only did building on tribal land provide an opportunity that otherwise appeared bleak, it also saved a lot of time. “We don’t have to do a lot of the things that you have to do on county land to get our development done,” Leary explains. Tahoe Forest Products signed the lease in the summer of 2022 and cut their first board as soon as December 2023.

The mill takes up 40 acres of the tribe’s 140 acres there, avoiding culturally and environmentally sensitive areas. In addition to rent on a 25 year lease for the land, the tribe also received royalties on products sold. The mill also employs Tribe members.

The mill currently turns out rough green lumber, which as the name implies is rougher than the typical wood found at Home Depot and requires niche clientele. However, Leary hopes to provide smoother, more commonly sought after wood in the next year. It will require more equipment, but in the near future, those Tahoe sourced logs could soon be found in local stores fitted with a Tahoe Forest Products logo.

Editor’s note: The Tribune was not able to reach members of the Tribe for comment.