Quality Lumber, Quality Life

Marks Lumber takes pride in being a part of the Montana community as a thriving family owned business for over 75 years. Being a solid member of this community means Marks Lumber provides quality products, provides quality jobs for their team, and works with quality foresters, using Best Management Practices, to harvest timber in a sustainable and ecologically friendly fashion.

Quality Forests can mean different things to different people. But at Marks Lumber we believe in multiple use. The Marks Lumber team are avid outdoors people who enjoy hiking, biking, back country skiing, fishing, and hunting to name a few. Modern harvest techniques allow timber to be harvested in a fashion that provides economic opportunity in the form of beautiful timber products, but leaves behind healthy forest's for all of us to live and play in.

At Marks, the whole log is utilized to develop commercially viable products. The best logs make our amazing timber products; we also sell (and use in our operation) affordable bio-fuel. Poor quality logs and virgin mill by-products make great natural landscape products that beautify landscapes, enrich soil, and protect our children at play.

Quality of life for the Montana community as a whole is improved both from the economic benefit of a thriving timber products business and from the improved forest health left behind by our foresters.

History of the Cross Semi-circle Brand

Cross Half-Circle in Montana

The “cross half-circle” mission brand first appeared in Montana with Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean de Smet in 1841 (Wikipedia) and was subsequently used by other notable missionaries including Antonio Ravalli. The missionaries’ stock, mostly mules and horses, bore the cross half-circle brand to help them identify their stock from horses belonging to the Salish and Flathead Indians they ministered to.

Johnny Grant, the founder of the well-known Grant Kohrs Ranch, is said to have used the cross half-circle in what is now known as the Deer Lodge Valley starting around 1857. Some people think he may have seen the brand on an abandoned and dilapidated fir trading post. Grant used many other brands; and by the time he sold his ranch to Conrad Kohrs he was using the brand “G hanging J”.

Marks Family and Cross Half-Circle

Ernest Marks bought one of the first homesteads, registered in Montana by H.L. Tanner, under the Homestead act of 1864, in the late 1880’s.

Ernest began buying homesteads to support his draft horse business and was using the cross half-circle brand on his working stock. The cross half-circle brand was officially registered October 27, 1888, as the 1068^th brand recorded in Montana.

Ernest Marks son, Merle Marks, continued the agricultural business that had grown to include cattle. Merle also helped neighbors with blacksmithing, and began milling some timber products for mostly agricultural use both on the growing Marks Ranch, but also for many neighbors. The mill was installed around 1938. All of these endeavors allowed Merle to trade for additional property in the area. An interesting side note is that Merle, under the guidance of his Uncle Irving Marks and with the help of many neighbors, completed building the large white barn with the white cross half-circle brand on the green roof at the entrance to Marks Lumber in 1926.

During the 40’s and 50’s the Marks family continued both ranching and milling rough lumber as an extra source of income to support the cattle operation. Merle’s son Bob, along with his wife Barbara, continued ranching, using the cross half-circle brand. Bob also continued milling rough lumber to supplement the cattle ranching operation.

A Full-Time Production Mill is Born

In the late 1980’s, current Marks Lumber owner, one of Bob and Barbara’s sons, Steve and his wife Laura, retrofitted the old mill and began making railroad cross-ties to support their cattle operation. While manufacturing cross-ties, design and construction began on the current mill, which was completed in 2000.

Completion of the big sawmill was obviously a key milestone. However, Steve realized the need to continually innovate for improved efficiency in terms of product recovery, product diversity, and labor efficiency. The following list of major enhancements are guide posts for the continual evolution and innovation at Marks Lumber:

• 1998 - Addition of a planer mill to provide many additional specialty products
• 2005-2006 - Addition of a bio-fuel powered dry-kiln to improve product quality
• 2008 - Addition of a band mill to improve efficiency in the mill
• 2006 - 2010 - Grinding capability and a Bark Sorting Plant to help monetize wood-fiber that had previously been burned. Additional products include: Engineered Wood fiber, for playground safety; decorative bark, for gardening and landscaping; mulch, both natural and colored, for landscaping; and soil conditioner and compost
• 2008 - Built a full timber frame, 4400 sq foot office and showroom
• 2009 - Addition of an in-house timber frame shop to provide the value-added service of complete timber frame construction to customers
• 2016 - Addition of an optimizing trim saw and end-matcher to improve product quality, make our flooring easier to install, while improving product recovery from our wood-fiber investment

The Future

A New Logo for a Trusted Brand

Marks Lumber has now adopted the old mission brand “cross half-circle” as an identifying mark on our business logo. The cross half-circle symbol lives on as both a livestock brand and as a logo representing Marks Lumber’s continued commitment to the Montana community, the land, the forest, and to quality timber products.

Sources

The primary source for this history comes from oral history provided by Bob Marks (1932 -) and his brother Doug Marks (1927- ). In addition, the following online sources were used to verify dates and locations, etc.

https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/grko/exb/Family/Grant/grko2118_iron.html .

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Antonio Ravalli. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Ravalli.

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Pierre-Jean Desmet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Jean_De_Smet.

http://www.mtmemory.org/cdm/search/collection/p16013coll33/